


Lets Go Rattle the Stars

by wisteriawrites



Category: ATEEZ (Band), Throne of Glass Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Throne of Glass, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Chapter 5 is Inspired by Game of Thrones, Courtesans, Demons, Dialogue Heavy, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Fae & Fairies, Fae Choi San, Fae Jeong Yunho, Fae Kang Yeosang, Fae Song Mingi, Falling In Love, Graphic Description, Graphic descriptions of injury, Heavily Based on Throne of Glass, Human Jung Wooyoung, Inconsistent writing style, M/M, Minor Choi Jongho/Kang Yeosang, Minor Jeong Yunho/Song Mingi, Minor Kim Hongjoong/Park Seonghwa, Not Beta Read, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow To Update, Specifically 08x03, period-typical violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:06:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27543562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wisteriawrites/pseuds/wisteriawrites
Summary: "Why do you cry, Fireheart?""Because I am lost and do not know the way."orA decade after the fall of the Fae kingdom at the hands of his father and the disappearance of magic, Prince Jung Wooyoung meets a pretty Fae courtesan with black hair and eyes that shine silver in the moonlight. As more and more secrets and lies build between them, Wooyoung has to wonder why and how he ever fell for the male in the first place.
Relationships: Choi San & Jung Wooyoung, Choi San/Jung Wooyoung
Comments: 21
Kudos: 41





	1. The Courtesan

**Author's Note:**

> Seonghwa shifted on his feet for a moment, eyebrows furrowed in consideration. Wooyoung was about to continue walking and go on his way when he finally spoke, his voice quiet. “Do you want to come in?” 
> 
> Wooyoung looked between him and the door to the brothel, though he already knew what his answer would be.

To any man in his right mind, exploration is key to life. Exploration gives a purpose to continue on in difficult times, a reason to stay curious, and a drive to discover.

Exploration and curiosity go hand in hand. 

Exploration and curiosity are how Jung Wooyoung now found himself wandering the streets of Rifthold, busy even now, in the dead of night. As the crown prince of Adarlan, Wooyoung has always been required to stay safe. Always protected, always with a guard or a servant. He’s never been allowed to just wander. He knows nothing about his people, nothing about their needs or the condition of the capital that surrounds the castle. 

The city had Wooyoung captivated. The emerald roofs paired with the ivory walls gave it an aura he couldn’t begin to describe. People in clothing of all colors bustled past him, some of the women occasionally throwing him a wink or a light titter of a laugh. The minimal attention he was getting was enough to have him pulling his hood up a bit higher, the fear of being discovered in the back of his mind.

As he was observing a baked goods stand (Wooyoung had never smelled anything so addicting in his life, not even anything made by the castle cooks could compare), a door was suddenly slammed open. A young man was pushed out, shortly followed by an older man. The young man stumbled to the ground, but before he was able to get up the older one delivered a kick to his shoulder blade, disabling him long enough to allow a foot to be pressed into the small of his back. Wooyoung stared in shock as the older man began yelling loud enough to disturb almost everyone on the street, “You think you can charge me extra, you little bitch?!”

The young man on the ground began to open his mouth to answer, but the foot on his back came down a second time, even harder. “You do what I want you to for the price we agreed on!” Wooyoung watched as the old man spat on the other, then brought his attention to the people around them. Nobody seemed bothered anymore, not paying any mind to the man on the ground, obviously in pain. They all acted as if this was a daily occurrence. He hesitantly took a step towards the scene. “Excuse me?” Wooyoung’s voice was small, uncertain. The old man turned his head, his attention brought elsewhere long enough for the young man under him to escape from under the foot. 

“What do you want?” The man spoke gruffly, presumably from the strain he’d put on his voice mere moments before. 

Wooyoung took a moment to glance at the young man, still on the ground but sat up now, and that was when he realized this man is Fae. He had only ever met one other Fae, his servant, and he had thought that would be the most beautiful man he would ever lay his eyes on. But this man he was looking at right now was absolutely stunning. Deep black hair paired with blue grey eyes that were almost silver in the moonlight, fox like features and high cheekbones. The telling features of his Fae heritage made him all the more ethereal, the delicately pointed ears and cute little fangs. 

Taking his gaze away from this beautiful man and back to the one he was speaking to, Wooyoung found a new confidence. “I couldn't help but notice you hurting this man. I wanted to know what he’s done to deserve it.” The old man seemed a bit shocked at the prying, but he was doing a decent job of hiding it. “The little whore is trying to charge me extra.” Wooyoung took a moment to realize what the words meant. The Fae male was a courtesan. The fact didn’t deter him, though. It only made him more determined. “So? Wouldn’t you after having to sleep with someone such as yourself?”

Wooyoung heard the Fae male suppress a laugh from the ground, the sound only seeming to anger the old man further. “Who the hell do you think you are, kid? The king?” Wooyoung had to hide his own laugh. The irony of that question. 

“No. I’m just a person.”

“Then mind your own business and go bother someone else.”

Wooyoung simply shrugged and held out his hand to the Fae male, who gladly took it. The old man seemed to have other ideas for the courtesan, though, as he was grabbing Wooyoung’s wrist. “Are you deaf now? I said piss off.” The prince tugged his arm out of the grip, sending the man a look of disgust. “I will once you pay this man what you owe him.”

The old man seemed to consider that for a moment, looking around at the small crowd that had gathered and brought their attention back to the situation, before pulling a few gold coins from his pocket and shoving them into the Fae male’s waiting hands. He grabbed the beauty’s face, pulling him close enough to growl into his ear, “Take your money and go with your little boyfriend. You aren’t even a decent fuck anyways.”

The man turned and left, but it seemed the Fae male wanted the last word. 

“I’m the best fuck you’ll ever have, creep!” 

The insult brought a smile to Wooyoung’s face, and the courtesan seemed satisfied now as he turned to him, a smile of his own bringing out the cutest dimples Wooyoung had ever seen. “Thank you,” the male said, appreciation lacing his tone. 

“You’re welcome.” Wooyoung turned to leave, but a gentle hand on his shoulder stopped him. He was met with that smile once again, those pale eyes warm. “Walk with me?”

And who was Wooyoung to say no to a little more exploration?

***

Wooyoung walked with the male (whose name he had learned was “Seonghwa”) for quite a long time. He let him talk, listening and adding his thoughts in where it was appropriate. He had forgotten why he was outside the castle alone in the first place, completely entranced by the beauty that was this man. Before he knew it they were stopping in front of a building, delicate and unassuming at first glance but he knew what the interior held.

Seonghwa shifted on his feet for a moment, eyebrows furrowed in consideration. Wooyoung was about to continue walking and go on his way when he finally spoke, his voice quiet. “Do you want to come in?” 

Wooyoung looked between him and the door to the brothel, though he already knew what his answer would be. When he nodded, Seonghwa took his hand and led him inside. Wooyoung could hear the sounds coming from behind closed doors, moans from women and men alike, and fought to keep his blush down. He had never done anything like this before, let alone gone inside a brothel. His father would kill him if he ever found out he was doing this now. 

Seonghwa led him to an open door, Wooyoung following close behind. Once they were both inside and he heard the lock on the door click, the reality came down on him. He was going to sleep with a courtesan, he was going to lose his virginity to a courtesan. A courtesan who happened to be the most beautiful person he had ever seen. He took in the room and couldn’t really say he was surprised by the contents. There was a bed pushed against the back wall, a small bedside table with a jar of an oil of some kind next to it. On the other side of the room was a wash tub with a few rags for cleaning up. It was simple but not unexpected. 

Wooyoung brought his attention back to Seonghwa, who was already untying the strings at the top of his shirt. He seemed to sense the slight discomfort coming from him, as he was soon stepping closer to him and placing a hand on his cheek.

“You can tell me to stop and I will,” Seonghwa reassured him. “We could forget this happened.”

Oh, but Wooyoung had come so far already. He could only shake his head, a moment too late for it to be convincing.

“I need words, pretty.”

“I don’t want to stop,” Wooyoung breathed out.

And then Seonghwa’s hands moved into his hair, gently pulling him closer and his lips were attaching to his throat.

It only lasted a few seconds, just a warm press of lips against his skin. It was surprisingly innocent, despite the situation. 

And that’s when he realized he's not responding, feeling tension beginning at Seonghwa’s frame and ending where his lips meet Wooyoung’s neck. His own hands finally find a place at Seonghwa’s waist and are met with an unfairly slim stature. 

When one of Seonghwa’s hands found its way under Wooyoung’s shirt, he couldn't help the gasp that slipped out. It was so hard not to press into the touch, so he let himself shiver at the touch. Wooyoung groaned quietly, pressing into him as much as possible, arms dropping and trying to get the hem of Seonghwa’s shirt up and over his head.

And then Seonghwa’s hands were all over him, roaming the expanse of honey skin until his nails were digging hard enough to leave half moon shapes behind. There was a sigh so soft that comes from Seonghwa that made him whimper, and the male’s hands dance on his stomach before they tugged at the hem of his shirt, and then he was pulling away to tug it off, mouth following right after to drag wet kisses down Wooyoung’s neck, tongue laving across the skin before biting down on his collarbone. 

One moment Wooyoung’s feet were on the ground and the next he was being lifted up and carried to the bed. The gentleness with which he set Wooyoung down on the mattress melted his heart. He would have let himself believe it meant something had they not met only hours ago. The rest of their clothes are quickly discarded and Wooyoung doesn’t even have the time to admire the body in front of him before it’s leaned over him, jar of oil in hand (when did he have the time to grab that?).

A hand tapping his hip had Wooyoung turning over onto his hands and knees. He settled into position, wiggling his hips to get more comfortable and his back arched deep enough that there’s a filthy groan that came from behind him.

That’s when he knew he looked good.

It doesn’t take long before Seonghwa’s fucking him with two of his fingers, careful to always be sure Wooyoung was comfortable. A third finger pressed at his entrance and he spread his legs even further, lifting his hips just right and a whimper slips out of him when the fingers brush against a spot that has him seeing stars. 

There was a familiar twinge at the base of his spine, sweat beading at his skin as he opened up greedily, happy with being filled. The sound that comes out of him is nothing compared to the slick sounds coming from behind him. Seonghwa’s clean hand rested on the swell of Wooyoung’s ass, keeping him still. His blunt nails dug into his skin hard enough that he knew red half moons would be left behind before the end of the night, and he had to muffle himself at the belated realization that he liked marks being left on him.

And then both hands were leaving him, the empty feeling making him whine. Wooyoung could hear Seonghwa slicking himself up with the oil, a hand coming to guide him onto his back. Then Seonghwa was leaning over him, lips dragging up his stomach. Before he could think of anything to say that was more coherent than fuck me already, Seonghwa had already buried himself inside Wooyoung. 

His limbs felt like they were melting into the bed and his brain was hazy enough that the feeling of Seonghwa’s sharp hip bones meeting the back of his ass barely registered, too focused on how full he felt. There was a faint buzzing in his ears, the dull thud of his heartbeat ringing too loudly for him to hear the smack of Seonghwa’s hips against him. 

“Fuck, baby,” Seonghwa’s groan was harsh when he bottomed out, sliding in rougher than he had been the entire night.

The only reason Wooyoung could tell that Seonghwa was equally affected as him wasn’t in the way his breathing went heavy, but in the way his thighs noticeably shake against Wooyoung’s, quivering with the strain of not fucking Wooyoung into the mattress before he’d fully adjusted.

A choked moan bursted out of him when Seonghwa’s hand reached down and wrapped around his neglected cock.

His nails pressed into his palms as Seonghwa stroked while pushing in slow enough that he was forced to feel the way the courtesan’s cock dragged along his walls, pressing so deep he thought he could feel it in his stomach. 

“Fuck, oh God,” Wooyoung whimpered, writhing as he pushed his ass back to fuck himself, body thrumming because he was so sensitive he could feel it start in his toes and end with a knot in his stomach that told him he would absolutely burst at any second. “Please, right there-oh fuckfuckfuck-”

That was more than enough to have Seonghwa grind once, twice, before a loud, rough groan slipped past his teeth when he sank back in, steady and unhurried into the tight, slick heat that Wooyoung was providing him. He wasn’t slow but he wasn’t fast either, and Wooyoung couldn’t contain the guttural moan that left him when Seonghwa’s cock dragged against his walls in a burn so delicious he could’ve cried in relief. 

He didn’t know how the pained groan made its way out of his throat when Seonghwa angled his hips just right, the sound verging on a wail that was just downright obscene. And then Seonghwa shifted again, precise in a way that had him whimpering, fighting down sobs, squirming as his hips wiggled to find a release.

“Please, I can’t-I need to-” he begged, the words coming out in a cracked whine as Seonghwa’s lips mouthed over his shoulder, biting down hard enough that Wooyoung knew there would be a mark there and the possessiveness of the action had him biting back another sob.

He could barely hear himself or the sound of Seonghwa’s hips smacking into his ass over the sound of the headboard crashing into the wall or the creaking of the bed because he was too far gone, couldn’t think, couldn’t even breathe properly. He didn’t really know what to focus on because Seonghwa was fucking into him, searching for his own release and he was going crazy because he liked it…

He could vaguely feel how wet his cheeks had become and the line of drool that made its way down his chin, and Seonghwa’s pace faltered for a moment at the sight. Wooyoung couldn’t even keep his eyes open properly, because Seonghwa’s fucked him silly at this point, every push punching a small and weak moan out of his lungs.

It was suddenly like Seonghwa was everywhere - all over him and inside him, rough hands turning him inside out, his stomach twisting into knots, vision going blurry and he knew his orgasm was right there, just a little bit out of reach. He couldn’t even make proper sounds anymore, air punched out of his throat the harder Seonghwa went, pushing in to the hilt, frantic and rough and hard.

His muscles were tightening as his limbs locked up, toes curling at the impending orgasm, barely managing to keep himself from thrashing at how hard he was getting railed, body taut, ready to snap.

“Come,” Seonghwa murmured and then Wooyoung was gone.

He barely even registered it when Seonghwa’s head dropped down, sinking his teeth into his shoulder, and he could barely feel anything other than the way it crashed into him, body quivering.

And then Seonghwa’s hips slammed into him once, twice, before he stills with a gritted fuck, voice low and grating under his breath, cock twitching before coming as well, and Wooyoung was reeling at the fact that Seonghwa was filling him up. 

***

Wooyoung wasn't sure how being with a courtesan worked, but cuddling was something he was positive didn’t usually happen. Once Seonghwa had cleaned both of them up, he had laid Wooyoung down and clung onto him. He wasn’t sure how long it had been, but he was beginning to drift off. 

Seonghwa’s head lifted up, making Wooyoung open his eyes to look back at him. “Was that your first time?” He sighed and nodded, prepared to be mocked. Seonghwa only continued to look at him with those mesmerizing eyes. “Was it everything you ever dreamed it would be?” 

Wooyoung shook his head and before Seonghwa’s disappointed look deepened he gave the male a smile. “It was better.”

Warmth bloomed in his chest at the sight of his dimples and his eyes forming little crescents. The courtesan shifted, leaning over him to place his chin on Wooyoung’s chest. “What’s your name, pretty?” 

Wooyoung hadn’t planned on meeting anyone he would share his name with, let alone someone he actually wanted to share it with. He licked his lips before breathing out the first name he could think of. “Yeosang.” 

Seonghwa hummed, sitting up. “Well, Sangie, let me walk you home.” 

Wooyoung shook his head again, falling into his lie even further. “I’m a servant in the castle. I wouldn’t want you to walk all the way up there with me just to come right back.” As he stood to collect his clothing, Seonghwa’s eyes raked up and down his body. 

Wooyoung dressed himself, maybe a little too quickly. He wanted to spend the rest of his nights with the Fae male if it meant he could continue to feel that toe curling pleasure he could still feel thrumming in his veins. 

“At least let me walk you down to the door,” Seonghwa was standing, pulling the blanket off the bed and wrapping it around his shoulders. Wooyoung nodded, not finding it in himself to deny that offer.

Wooyoung caught a glimpse of a plaque on the door to the room, reading ‘San’. He didn’t let himself think too much about having just had sex in someone else’s bedroom. 

The walk to the door was the same as the walk to the room. Moans still filled the empty silence, often too loud to be convincing. Although Wooyoung was not one to judge, he was sure he had been one of the loudest in the entire building. As Seonghwa opened the door and the chilly autumn weather hit them, Wooyoung turned to him. “How much money do I owe you?”

Seonghwa’s face dropped for a moment, as if he had forgotten. The expression was quickly wiped off by a mischievous grin. “Don’t worry about it. It’s on me this time. But next time, you have to pay.”

The implication of a next time had a blush rising to Wooyoung’s cheeks and spreading to his very normal round ears that he was suddenly wishing weren’t so ordinary, and he found himself simply nodding.

Seonghwa leaned forward, his lips pressing gently against Wooyoung’s cheek and slowly moving around to his lips. It was only a light press, barely even there, and it was gone before he even had time to register that it was, in fact, there. 

“Goodnight, Sangie. And thank you again.”

“Goodnight.”

Wooyoung turned away, feeling eyes on him until he rounded the corner down the street. He had assumed cuddles weren’t standard behavior for a courtesan and their clients, but now he was positive it might be more common than kissing them.


	2. Throne of Glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What are the Fae like?” 
> 
> Yeosang’s head whipped up faster than he had ever seen it. “Why are you asking?” His voice was hushed, as if afraid there was someone listening. Wooyoung hadn’t seen anyone else enter the library since they had been here. “I want to learn about the Fae.”

The moment Wooyoung closed the secret door in his wall (that he had never known was there in all the years of living in this room, hidden behind a tapestry) he could hear the door to his bedroom open and close. He was quick to pull the tapestry back over the door, effectively hiding it again. Once he turned he was met with the face of his servant, Yeosang.

Yeosang was the only other Fae Wooyoung had ever met. He had light golden blond hair paired with warm brown eyes and pale skin. A birthmark graced his left eye and part of his temple, though it often got covered by light powder cosmetics. Yeosang was honestly one of the most incredible people Wooyoung had ever met, not only in looks but also his resolve. 

The first time they had met was in the labor camp in the north of the kingdom. Wooyoung had heard rumors of a young man who had survived there for almost an entire decade when most of the slaves didn't last more than six months. He decided he wanted to see the boy himself and had ended up bringing him back home with him as his personal servant. As much as he had wished he could take every slave in the camp, taking one was already enough to get him in trouble with his father. The first time Wooyoung had seen Yeosang’s back he had cried. It was completely ravaged, the skin mere slivers, most hanging on by just a few threads. Infection had set into most wounds due to salt from the mines often being rubbed into them by guards. Yeosang had told him that while most other slaves had received similar treatment, he had been the worst case. Whether it had been his Fae heritage or his own back talk and attitude, Wooyoung didn’t know. Probably a combination of both. 

Somehow, Yeosang had made a full recovery, though he’ll bear the scars for life. Wooyoung had grown attached to him and they had become close friends. Even now, here in the castle, Yeosang was a force to be reckoned with. Wooyoung has seen him scare even the most battle hardened soldiers with a single look a fair share of times. It never failed to make him laugh, especially on his worst days.

That didn’t mean he was laughing with one of those looks directed at him now.

“Where in the name of the Gods have you been? I was about to have the royal guard sent out to look for you,” Yeosang ranted, coming closer with each word. It took everything he had to not run across the room and away from his best friend. He simply sat at the foot of his bed, keeping his expression as nonchalant as possible. “I went out,” Wooyoung stated.

Once again, the incredulous look on Yeosang’s face would have been funny had it not been directed at him. “You went out?” He parroted, to which Wooyoung nodded. Yeosang’s mouth hung open for a moment, the words he wanted to say lost to him. “Wooyoung, you can’t just do that. At the very least, you need to take me with you, and even then I would still have to ask permission from your father.” Wooyoung rolled his eyes, a deep sigh leaving him. 

“That’s the whole point. I don’t want someone to come with me.” He knew explaining wouldn’t make any difference, so he just left it at that. Yeosang sat by him with a sigh of his own. “Could you at least tell me so I’m not running around the castle like an idiot next time?” That was enough to pull a smile out of Wooyoung. He was grateful his friend could understand him so easily. Yeosang matched his smile and he was reminded of why he admires him so much. He had walked through hell, yet he walked out still able to smile.

It made him eager to share what had happened, though he knew he shouldn’t. “I met someone.” It was cryptic, he knew. “I really liked him. He was nice and made me feel really comfortable.” The way Yeosang’s face fell told him he didn’t approve, but he didn’t say anything, so Wooyoung took that as acceptance. “I want to see him again.”

It seemed that was what it took to crack him. “Are you sure that’s safe?” 

Was he sure Seonghwa was safe? No. Not at all. But did he still want to try? Yes. Yes he did. Wooyoung found himself nodding.

“What was he like, then?” Wooyoung hadn’t been expecting to be asked anything about Seonghwa, not when he was obviously so disapproving. 

He looked out his window, set facing out towards the city. “He was Fae. And gorgeous. I couldn’t believe he was real at first. He’s a courtesan.” Wooyoung felt Yeosang shift beside him. “That good, huh?” Better, Wooyoung thought. Yeosang stood, turning to leave the room. 

“Get some rest, Wooyoung. You have a lot to do tomorrow.” Wooyoung nodded distractedly as he heard the door click shut.

***

It had been almost a week since Wooyoung had met Seonghwa. With the days he had stuck in his own mind, he had begun to wonder about why they had met in the first place. There seemed to be a pattern that followed Fae everywhere they went. First the targeted abuse on Yeosang in the labor camp, and now an attack on a Fae male from his own customer. Wooyoung wanted to know why everyone seemed to hate them.

The war ten years ago had been because the Fae were becoming too powerful. His father had told him that much. But from what Wooyoung had seen, the Fae were peaceful. They wouldn’t have used power against Adarlan.

He didn’t want to think about what happens when doubt the king’s words.

So as he sat in the library with Yeosang, bored out of his mind and tapping his fingers against every surface possible because he’s already read every book that was interesting, his mind was drifting back onto those thoughts. A glance over at his friend told him he was deeply immersed in his book. It dawned on him that he was looking at one of the best people to possibly ask his questions to. “What are the Fae like?” 

Yeosang’s head whipped up faster than he had ever seen it. “Why are you asking?” His voice was hushed, as if afraid there was someone listening. Wooyoung hadn’t seen anyone else enter the library since they had been here. “I want to learn about the Fae.” He didn’t lower his own voice far enough, it seemed, as Yeosang was leaning over the table and placing a finger over his lips. Yeosang’s own lips were pressed into a thin line, something he often did when thinking.

The open book on the table was closed and picked up, and then Yeosang was standing and motioning for Wooyoung to follow. They walked together in silence to Wooyoung’s room and sat together in the adjoined parlor. Wooyoung caught sight of Yeosang worrying his bottom lip between his teeth, something he’d picked up on as being a nervous habit. Another moment of silence passed and just as Wooyoung was getting ready to complain, his servant spoke up. “You really want to learn about the Fae?” He nodded. “This isn’t something you’re doing to joke around?” He shook his head. 

With a sigh, Yeosang placed his hands in his lap. “I can get in trouble for telling you any of this.”

“But why? Why is it so wrong to talk about the Fae, or to be Fae?” 

Yeosang took one last look at the door before crossing his legs under him. “It’s not….wrong. But you would be better off hating Fae.” He began. Wooyoung’s attention had already peaked. “If you want to talk about what happened ten years ago, you can’t call it a war. There was no chance. It was a massacre. Once magic was gone, the Fae didn’t have a chance.” Wooyoung shook his head. He really didn’t want to talk about that.

“I just want to learn about what they’re like.” Yeosang nodded, seeming to not want to talk about his own experiences either. 

“The Fae are…diverse. More than humans are. There are full Fae and demi-Fae. Demi-Fae can’t use magic or shift like full Fae can, and while they aren’t immortal like full Fae, they live longer than most humans do.”

Wooyoung interrupted, a new question already in mind. “What’s shifting?” Yeosang seemed a little put out by the interruption, but he let it go. “Shifting is the process of changing from a Fae form to an animal form.”

“What do you turn into?”

“This.”

Wooyoung tilted his head, an eyebrow raised and Yeosang mirrored the expression. He tucked his golden hair behind his ears, revealing perfectly round ones and Wooyoung belated realized that he naturally had tiny fangs no matter what he was. “But humans aren’t animals.”

“They might as well be,” he stated, his eyes glazing over for a moment before he continued. “I’m one of the lucky ones who got stuck in their animal form when magic disappeared. But even then, many didn’t end up getting to enjoy that luck.” 

Wooyoung offered his hand when the glazed over look returned, and his friend gladly took it. He was always happy to give whatever comfort he could despite not being able to fully understand.

Though, as he sat with Yeosang, carefully watching over him as he spoke, all he could think about was asking Seonghwa what his animal form was.

***

The next morning Wooyoung finally convinced Yeosang to take him into the city with him. He would’ve been lying if he said part of him didn’t hope he would bump into Seonghwa on accident, but he really had enjoyed his last trip. He was excited to explore a little more, under supervision this time, of course. But he knew Yeosang wouldn’t try to keep him from doing anything, unlike the guards.

Yeosang had made sure the captain of the royal guard, Jongho, would keep the trip between just the three of them (Wooyoung was absolutely positive the two of them were together but he had no solid proof yet). With a little bit of privacy inside the castle walls and a friend who knew his way around the city, he was feeling less anxious than he had the previous week. 

Wooyoung was able to look around at the street stands, fresh produce and baked goods drawing him in. Seeing the results of his citizens’ hard work made him feel giddy inside, but also a bit of guilt. He had never had to work for anything before, though he’d always wanted to. He had once begged his mother to let him take cooking lessons from the castle chef, though the idea was quickly shut down. 

It was while he and Yeosang were at a small jewelry peddler that Wooyoung felt a hand come around his waist. He was fully prepared to look at whoever it was and tell them to fuck off when a voice he recognized called out right next to him, “Hi, pretty.” To say he was elated to see Seonghwa smiling at him might have been an understatement. Wooyoung matched the smile, unable to hide the excitement building in his chest. “Hello,” he replied.

“I was worried I might have scared you off.” Seonghwa spoke with a small pout on his face, making him look absolutely adorable. Wooyoung almost wanted to coo at him. 

“No, I’ve just been busy. I’m actually here with a friend,” he looked over at Yeosang, whose attention was still on a pair of alexandrite earrings. Seonghwa’s face seemed to fall a bit. “I was hoping you’d like to come have lunch with me, but if you’d rather stay with your friend I understand.” Wooyoung was quick to shake his head. “No, I’d love to. I’ll just tell him first.”

He left Seonghwa’s side to return to Yeosang’s, grabbing his attention with a tap on the shoulder. He looked up, earrings still in hand. “Is something wrong?” 

“No, I just wanted to ask if I could go with my friend. Seonghwa.” Yeosang looked over Wooyoung’s shoulder at the male in question. He looked back at Wooyoung with an expression that said he wanted to tell him no. But, to Wooyoung’s shock, he was only met with a “Be back before dark,” and a pat on his cheek.

After joining back up with Seonghwa and leaving the jewelry peddler behind, he was brought to a small restaurant. It wasn’t the type to serve full meals, but they had many pastries to pick from along with every type of tea Wooyoung had ever heard of, plus some. They took a seat near the windows so Wooyoung could continue to people-watch while he ate. 

The silence was comfortable, not awkward as he thought it would be. When he was about halfway through his pastry, Wooyoung remembered his discussion with Yeosang the day before. “Are you able to shift?” 

Seonghwa seemed taken aback for a moment. The shock quickly turned into consideration. After a moment, he finally spoke up, “Yes, I am.” The giddiness he had been feeling since leaving the castle this morning seemed like it would finally tip over and spill out of his body at the admission. “Into what?” 

“A fox…” Seonghwa was quiet. He didn’t seem to be offended by the question, but he was hesitant. Wooyoung didn’t pry any further. He thought that a fox was honestly the perfect animal for him.

As he continued to eat, Wooyoung found himself staring at the hand Seonghwa had rested on the table. He wanted to reach across the small space between them and link their hands, but thought that might seem too intimate. He must have been caught staring, however, as the hand he was so fixated on reached over and grabbed his own, lacing their fingers together. 

Intimacy it is, then.

The two finished up their pastries, each paying for their own despite Wooyoung’s insistence. Seonghwa had simply said “I was the one who invited you. At least split it if you won’t let me pay for yours”. Wooyoung found the gesture to be sweet.

The rest of the afternoon was spent walking aimlessly around the city, Seonghwa showing him sights that even Yeosang hadn’t tried to. As autumn began to close in even more the days had begun to shorten, leaving Wooyoung with the need to be back at the castle much sooner than he had hoped for. 

As they bid each other goodbye for the second time, Wooyoung found himself thinking he was more emotionally and physically satisfied than if the night had ended with them at the brothel again.

***

Wooyoung came back through the secret door once again, not wanting to risk being seen by any guards.

He had managed to be home before it was dark, so he was grateful to not have to face Yeosang’s wrath. What he didn’t expect was for his servant to already be waiting for him in his room. 

“I didn’t do anything this time.”

Yeosang nodded. “I know you didn’t. But I need to tell you something.”

Wooyoung sat in the middle of his bed, prepared to have a soft landing in case he passed out. Yeosang took a seat beside him.

“The owner of the brothel came to see your father today. He wanted to take out a loan from the crown.” His words seemed sluggish, as if he was speaking slowly enough to allow Wooyoung the time to process them before continuing. “His name was Park Seonghwa. And he looked nothing like your friend does.”

It hit Wooyoung like a ton of bricks. He was shaking his head unconsciously, not wanting to believe that Seonghwa was lying to him. But, then again, he was lying to Seonghwa as well.

“Whoever you’re sleeping with is lying to you. I just thought you should know that.”

Wooyoung simply nodded.

As Yeosang stood, he crossed the room to a table. When he returned he was carrying a book that looked about as old as the world itself. “This is a book with family trees of every Fae royal family there’s been. It goes all the way up to the Chois.”

Wooyoung nodded again, watching as Yeosang left him to his thoughts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dun dun dun-
> 
> This is honestly so much fun to write that I managed to finish this chapter pretty quickly. I'm still thinking of ways for the next one to go, so it may take a little longer!


	3. Crown of Midnight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Ashera Eyes  
> The fairest eyes, born from the night  
> Of brightest grey, shone silver in the moonlight”
> 
> Wooyoung let out a sound, turning the pages back and forth, desperately searching for anything else. There was nothing. 
> 
> Wooyoung had looked into those eyes. So much was finally coming together, crashing into him like a wave.
> 
> Seonghwa wasn’t just Fae. He wasn’t just a courtesan.
> 
> Seonghwa was Choi San, heir to the Fae throne and rightful King of the Fae Kingdom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm so sorry for this

Over the next four days Wooyoung found himself sneaking out into the city alone again (making sure to warn Yeosang each time, of course). Every night he returned to the street where he had first met “Seonghwa”, hoping to catch him between customers. Every night he returned unsuccessful. 

Of course he could have just gone to the brothel and requested him. He knew that. But he couldn’t bring himself to go and have to ask the real Seonghwa for himself.

He had so many questions, though, and he couldn’t just let them go. Even though he had lied himself, he’d had a reason. Wooyoung couldn’t see a reason for Seonghwa to lie about his name.

And so he continued to search every night.

***

Another week had passed quickly. More fruitless nights had Wooyoung wondering if Seonghwa had left the city completely, though for what reason, he couldn’t begin to guess. 

It was frustrating, to say the least. Even Yeosang had noticed a change in his mood and was steering clear of him for the most part. The only satisfaction he had gotten out of this week had been when he’d finally (finally) caught Yeosang and Jongho in the act. He’d accidentally stumbled upon them hidden in a corner, lips locked in something so filthy it could only be described as animalistic. He hadn’t stopped teasing the both of them since.

***

After another failed attempt at locating the courtesan, Wooyoung found himself locked up in his room, nose buried in the book Yeosang had given him. His interest in the Fae hadn’t lessened over the past week, but it had been blocked out by his desperate search for a while.

The book wasn’t as thick as he had thought it would be, though he figured that was most likely due to Fae being immortal for the most part. Sometimes it could take multiple centuries for a single monarch to pass away, he discovered. 

Wooyoung had debated starting from the end with the family he was most familiar with, the Chois. He had met them once, the Fae king and queen along with their son, when he was eleven years old. The memory was vague but he could remember the prince being around his own age. The boy had seemed energetic, even if a bit troubled. The one thing he could remember clearly was the young prince losing control over his magic and almost setting the entire room ablaze. 

It wasn’t long after that that the war began.

Wooyoung ended up starting from the beginning of the book, with ancient kings and queens. He learned that one of them had married into his own family, though that line was quickly broken with a war that ended a millenia ago.

Death seemed to follow many of the Fae royal families. Every few centuries a new king would rise, a new name added to the long list. There were no details on why this happened, so Wooyoung could only assume it was death.

***

Much quicker than he would have liked, Wooyoung had reached the Chois. They had been ruling for over 700 years, the longest he had seen so far. The most recent king had married a Fae woman from across the sea, from the Ashera family. Wooyoung always wished to sail across the sea. 

The page ended abruptly with the death of both monarchs in the war. Wooyoung turned over the page, finding one last name. Choi San.

The prince had been presumed dead for the past ten years. Though, no body had ever been found, so he was officially marked as missing. Wooyoung turned the page back to the previous, hoping to find something he may have missed. All he found was a short poem above the late queen’s name.

“Ashera Eyes  
The fairest eyes, born from the night  
Of brightest grey, shone silver in the moonlight”

Wooyoung let out a sound, turning the pages back and forth, desperately searching for anything else. There was nothing. 

Wooyoung had looked into those eyes. So much was finally coming together, crashing into him like a wave.

Seonghwa wasn’t just Fae. He wasn’t just a courtesan.

Seonghwa was Choi San, heir to the Fae throne and rightful King of the Fae Kingdom. 

Wooyoung now knew who he had been speaking to, who he had slept with. He knew where he could hope to find him, and now he knew who to ask Park Seonghwa to see.

Wooyoung was exiting the hidden door behind his tapestry before he could even think about telling Yeosang he was heading out.

***

As Wooyoung arrived at the brothel, a young woman was walking out the door. She was covered in bruises, especially the column of her throat and her collarbones. He took his chance with her. “Excuse me. Is San in?”

The woman looked at him, her eyes appearing to go through him and look into his very core. Once she deemed him worthy enough, her lilting voice answered. “Upstairs. Good luck with him, though. He hasn’t been taking anyone tonight.”

Wooyoung bowed in thanks, heading inside and up the stairs. He found himself faced by the same room San had brought him to before. The answer had been right in front of his eyes, the plaque he had disregarded the last time all the evidence he needed. He brought his hand up and quickly rapped on the door a few times. It took longer than it should have, but when the door opened and Wooyoung was met with San, there was no more denying the truth. 

San’s eyes lit up, a small smile gracing his beautiful face. “Sangie.”

Wooyoung shook his head, telling himself, no more lies. “Wooyoung.”

He watched as San’s smile faded, shock replacing it. “Prince…Wooyoung?” He nodded. San backed further into the room. “You let me sleep with you.”

“I did.” Wooyoung brushed past him to make himself at home on the bed. He settled in, making it clear he had no intention of leaving until he was finished. “When were you going to tell me I was also sleeping with royalty?”

San averted his gaze, an attempt to hide the one piece telling feature he couldn’t get rid of. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You do,” Wooyoung pushed. “You have a kingdom of your own, people who are desperate for you to take it back and protect them, and you’re hiding here, whoring yourself out to old men.” He seemed to have hit a nerve, as San’s eyes were back on him, hurt flashing across his face.

“You think I want to do this? You don’t understand what it means to be Fae. I wish that I’d had somewhere else to go, some other job that would take me.”

“You’re avoiding everything else I said.”

San seemed to sag with his entire body, any fight he had leaving him. He crossed the room, took his own place on the bed on the opposite side of Wooyoung. His next words were so quiet that Wooyoung wouldn’t have heard them if he hadn’t been listening so intently. “I don’t want it. I never have.”

Wooyoung brought himself closer to San. “So you decided to hide yourself out in a brothel?” San shook his head. “Seonghwa found me in the river. He brought me in and tried to help me find somewhere to work and live, but when nothing worked out he started training me here.” Wooyoung listened closely, giving him the chance to continue but got nothing else.

“I do know what it’s like to be Fae. I’ve seen it. My servant is Fae. I’ve seen what people have done to him.” San looked a little guilty, but Wooyoung continued to close the distance between them until they were right beside each other. “Your people need you, San. They deserve to have somewhere to go back to.”

San brought his hand to his mouth, chewing his nails. “You’re speaking out against your father,” he murmured. 

“I don’t care. If anyone else is being treated the way Yeosang has been, I’ll speak out against him whenever I feel like,” Wooyoung took San’s hand away from the wrath of his teeth, holding it still in his own. “I’m on your side.”

San only shook his head. “I don’t want it.”

Wooyoung opened his mouth to chastise him, but stopped himself. Looked, really looked, over San, his posture, the way his brows were drawn together. “You’re afraid.” The silence he was met with was the only answer he needed. He didn’t know why, but Wooyoung felt drawn in, felt the need to claim San for his own.

He brought his hands up to cup San’s face, and connected their lips.

Butterflies exploded in his stomach when San returned the gesture, their movements lazy and content (and a bit untrained on Wooyoung’s part). Wooyoung spoke between kisses, “When my father is gone, I promise you’ll have nothing to be afraid of.”

San pulled back, leaving just enough distance between them to look into Wooyoung’s eyes. Though it was half hearted, he nodded in agreeance and connected their lips again.

As much as Wooyoung wanted to spend the entire night with San, he knew he had to return to the castle before Yeosang figured out he was gone. Separating from him was one of the hardest things he’s ever willed himself to do, maybe harder than it should have been. 

“I want to keep seeing you,” Wooyoung confessed. It brought a bright smile to San’s face, dimples out and proud. “Without paying. Nothing to do with your work,” he added.

“I’m fine with doing that,” was the answer he got and it made the butterflies flutter their wings even harder. 

Much like the last time, San walked him down to the door leading out to the street, this time hand in hand. Woooyoung turned to bid him goodnight and was met with one last searing kiss. 

Walking back to the castle, Wooyoung was sure that he wanted to continue kissing San for as long as he’d let him.

***

Wooyoung continued to meet San at least once a week, sometimes even two or three times. Their time together was something he always looked forward to, whether or not it ended with them together in a bed.

It was on one of the nights that did end that way, almost six months into their arrangement, that Wooyoung found himself asking a question in the middle of his post-orgasm haze. “What are Fae wedding ceremonies like?”

San’s hand stilled where it had been in his hair, causing Wooyoung to look up at him from his position against his chest. “Why do you ask?” It took a moment for Wooyoung’s brain to catch up with what the question seemed to imply. “It isn’t like that. I’m just wondering,” he rushed out. That combined with the blush rising on his face made San giggle, actually giggle, at him. 

“Well, I guess they’re a lot like human ones. But I honestly think they’re mostly only for show, like for royalty and lords.” His hand resumed it’s twisting and twirling strands of Wooyoung’s hair, relaxing him even further. “What do you mean?” Wooyoung couldn’t imagine not wanting to marry someone you love.

“Fae don’t really marry often unless it's an important family or a political alliance. We take mates instead,” San explained. That made enough sense to Wooyoung in his still fuzzy brain, causing him to nod. 

As San continued to play with his hair, Wooyoung thought he wouldn’t mind being mated to someone so attentive while relaxing him.

***

The first time Wooyoung saw San’s natural hair color, he almost tossed the block of black dye out the window. 

The strands were blond, blonder than even Yeosang’s hair, and shone prettily in candle and moonlight. Wooyoung wanted desperately to see how it looked in sunlight. It paired perfectly with his eyes.

It was then that he realized this man must have been handcrafted by the gods themselves.

***

When Wooyoung met Seonghwa, it had been an accident. 

San had been late arriving to their designated meeting spot, the jewelry peddler he had gone to with Yeosang. So Wooyoung had gone searching for him at the brothel. He was greeted by a man. He was handsome, if a bit bird-like in appearance, with black hair and dark eyes. He approached him, “Is San in? We were supposed to meet up but he’s late.” 

What he hadn’t expected was for the man’s face to light up in recognition. “You must be Wooyoung,” his voice was smooth like velvet. “San got back a little while before you. He should be down soon.”

Wooyoung stood silent a moment longer than he had wanted to. “He told you?” The man’s smile turned a bit sympathetic. “He did. I can call you something else if it makes you uncomfortable.” Wooyoung shook his head and the man continued, holding out his hand. Wooyoung took it for a brief shake. “I’m Seonghwa.”

Wooyoung let out a small ‘ah’. San had spoken very highly of Seonghwa on the occasions he came up in their conversations. It was clear he was important to him. “Do you know everything?” Seonghwa’s quick nod made his hair bounce daintily. He assumed the man must spend quite some time on it each morning to have each strand lay perfectly, whereas Wooyoung’s own always ended up mussed up from his own hands running through it. “He must trust you a lot.”

“It took a long time, but I think he does, too. I can’t begin to imagine the things he’s seen that have made it so hard to earn it,” Seonghwa said. Wooyoung couldn’t imagine it either. He didn’t want to. 

“Thank you for taking care of him,” Wooyoung didn’t know why he suddenly had the urge to thank him. He was grateful someone was taking care of San, of course, but wouldn’t anyone do the same if they found a child half frozen in a river? The warm smile he was given in return was worth it. “Of course,” a slight bow was given. “I’ll continue to do so. He’s become something like a child to me.” 

Wooyoung was about to ask Seonghwa if he had children of his own when another man walked up beside him and placed a kiss on the inside of his wrist. The action was so exceptionally intimate that Wooyoung felt like he was intruding. He felt that sense even more so when he noticed a set of matching bands around the couples' ring fingers. The new man was short, much closer to Wooyoung’s height than Seonghwa, with bright red hair that had to have been dyed similarly to how San does his own. 

The man’s smile was blinding as he held out his hand, which Wooyoung took. “I’m Hongjoong,” as Wooyoung let go of his hand, he noticed a small tattoo on the side of Hongjoong’s wrist that had been branded over. From what was left of it, he could make out a snake. It was then that Wooyoung realized he had seen a similar looking tattoo on San.

Wooyoung was spared from asking about it when San came down the stairs. He noticed Wooyoung fairly quickly. “I’m sorry, I know I’m late,” he began. Upon noticing the company he was in, San’s demeanor changed quicker than anything Wooyoung had ever seen. “No. No, you two aren’t corrupting him.”

Hongjoong shot San a look of pure offense. “We didn’t do anything!” San was already crowding Wooyoung in his arms, trying to usher him outside as quickly as possible. He was barely able to wave at the two.

He swore he could hear them laughing and a hushed “Cute” as the door shut.

Wooyoung was glad San had a family.

***

Wooyoung snuck San into the castle eight months into their arrangement. 

He wasn’t sure what to call it anymore, so he still stuck with ‘arrangement’. He had grown fond of San. It seemed like there was always something new to learn about him.

Nights like these were the ones Wooyoung enjoyed the most. Nights where they just laid together, doing nothing but talking and holding each other. 

After his first run in with Seonghwa and Hongjoong he had begun talking with them more on the days he ended up at the brothel. He had grown to like them both. He always made sure to let them know how much he appreciated them giving San hospitality. 

“What does your tattoo mean?” Wooyoung really didn’t know why he asked. He had a feeling he already knew, given Hongjoong had the same one. “It’s the brothel sigel. Tells everyone what I am and where I work until I pay my debt to them,” came San’s hushed reply. He sounded as if he was falling asleep and it warmed Wooyoung’s heart. “Debt?”

Wooyoung felt rather than saw San’s nod. “Takes money to train courtesans.”

He was turning to lay his face against San’s chest when his door opened and revealed a disheveled Yeosang.

When he had walked in he had appeared tense, but when his eyes set on Wooyoung he visibly relaxed. “I’m sorry. There was news that there’s been an accident at the brothel and I had to make sure you were okay.”

San was successfully awoken, his head lifting from the bed. “An accident?”

Yeosang nodded. Though they had never spoken before, Wooyoung knew his friend had grown to trust San these past months. “Someone was killed.”

Wooyoung couldn’t begin to describe the look on San’s face. The only thing he could think of was fear. It was pure fear. He was standing before Wooyoung had even processed the words. San was out the hidden door before he had finished standing.

Wooyoung followed.

***

San stared at the body.

An empty body, artfully mutilated, so cut up the bed was almost black with blood.

People had rushed into the room behind him, and he smelled the faint tang as someone was sick nearby.

But he just stayed there, letting the others fan out around him as they rushed to access the cooling body in the room. That ancient, ageless drum - his heartbeat - pulsed through his ears, drowning out any sound.

Seonghwa was gone. That vibrant, fierce, loving soul; the man who had been a beacon of hope to him - just like that, as if he was no more than a wisp of candlelight, he was gone.

When it had mattered most, San hadn’t been there.

Seonghwa was gone.

***

Wooyoung placed his hands on San’s shoulders, pulling to move him from where he had rooted himself in the doorway. There were tear tracks drying on his own cheeks. He hadn’t allowed himself to look longer than it took to figure out who it was.

“San.” 

His voice seemed to pull San back enough to move him, take him somewhere, anywhere else, but here. He settled for down the hallway, let San settle against the wall and sink to the floor. 

Wooyoung heard a scream, movement in his peripheral telling him it was Hongjoong, and it was the most heartbreaking sound he had ever heard. San’s head moved to look over, but Wooyoung held his face. Forced him to look at him. 

“Don’t look. Just look at me.”

He could see tears welling up in San’s eyes, his hands coming up to grip Wooyoung’s wrists. He made no motion to move his hands, just held on, as if grounding himself.

“He’s gone.”

Wooyoung felt his own tears building up again.

“It’s my fault.”

They spilled over.

San pulled him in, arms circling around him in a bruising grip. 

“It’s not your fault.”

***

Wooyoung had forced San to stay with him. He couldn’t let him stay in the brothel, not when there were guards in and out all day now.

Not when he knew leaving San alone was the worst idea he could possibly consider.

The first time San went back, he went with him. Hongjoong seemed to have been waiting for them. He looked exhausted. Lost. 

Alone.

He looked up at San, though he had trouble holding eye contact, fingers fidgeting with his wedding band. “Your debt was paid off last month,” Hongjoong said, moving over to a small burning fire. He pulled a poker out of the flames and returned to them, taking San’s hand in his.

Wooyoung moved to stop him when he pressed the hot iron against San’s wrist, but stopped himself when he noticed where it was.

He was branding off the tattoo.

He was freeing San.

He watched as they pulled each other into a hug, looked away when he heard a soft sob and whispered words, so soft that he knew only San was meant to hear. 

He followed San up the stairs, helped him collect his belongings. He had a feeling he knew what Hongjoong had told him.

San had no reason to stay here anymore.

***

Wooyoung let San stay with him. Only Yeosang and Jongho knew. They were the only other ones he trusted.

He had been told that Seonghwa’s murder was being investigated, but Jongho told the truth. Nobody was really doing anything. He didn’t have the heart to tell that to San, so he always said “They’re working really hard at it” and “It’s been hard because whoever it was left nothing behind”. It was slowly killing him inside to lie.

San had been quiet. Nothing like how he had been. Wooyoung supposed that was how he was mourning. He stuck by his side through it. 

One evening, while they were lying together, San murmured into his ear, “I know who it was.”

His interest piqued, Wooyoung entertained him. “Who?”

“She works for the brothel.”

Wooyoung sighed, turning in San’s arms to face him. “Why would she have done it, then?” From what he had learned, Seonghwa had always been nothing but kind to everyone he employed. 

“She was in love with him.”

“Then why him and not Hongjoong instead?” San shrugged.

“Love makes you do strange things.”

***

San had gone out for a walk when he’d seen her. 

He could hardly see through the blood lust that seized him in that moment, hardly able to remember his own name. 

He’d drawn his dagger from his boot before he had even realized it.

The streets were empty this time of night, and she had cornered herself in an alley unknowingly. When she noticed him approaching, she began to panic.

“Please,” she begged. “He would have ruined everything. We must rise up against the king.”

Her chest began heaving. “I’m doing this for our freedom. Our freedom. We’re on the same side in the end.”

He considered giving her all the injuries she had given Seonghwa.

“You’re not a murderer,” she whispered.

He stopped his approach. He considered her. “You’re leaving Rifthold tonight.”

“Thank you,” she sobbed.

“If I find out you’re still in the city at dawn,” he said, turning his back to her as he stalked back towards the castle, “I’ll kill you.” Enough. It was enough.

“Thank you,” she said again.

She was gone by morning.

***

“I’m leaving.”

Wooyoung almost choked on the air. “You’re leaving?” San nodded.

“Where are you going?” 

“Wendlyn.” The country across the sea. Wooyoung had always wanted to go. 

“When do you leave?” Wooyoung didn’t want to let him go.

“Tomorrow.” He felt something in his chest shatter. 

“Don’t go.”

“I have to.” He felt tears forming in his eyes.

“Don’t. Stay here. Stay with me.” 

“I can’t.” 

“Then take me with you.”

That was when Wooyoung realized it. 

“Wooyoung-”

“Please.” 

San stared at him, his expression surely matching Wooyoung’s own.

“Wendlyn, then.”

Love really does make you do strange things.

***

Wooyoung found Yeosang at their usual table in the library. His nose was buried deep in what he was sure was a romance novel. He took a seat across from him.

“Yeosang.”

His friend looked up at him, put out at the interruption. Wooyoung disregarded the look. “Go home.”

Yeosang’s eyebrows creased. “What?”

“Go back to whatever village or town you’re from. Build a life there. Take Jongho with you if he’ll go.” Yeosang was staring at him in shock, but he understood why. Then he was standing and pulling Wooyoung into a hug.

“Thank you,” he said, and Wooyoung shut his eyes. 

He watched from his window as a head of golden blond hair and a head of black hair disappeared into the city. 

It was only hours later when the other castle staff reported a missing servant and the captain of the royal guard.

***

Wooyoung’s legs found the strength to move. He took a breath. And with a final look at the city, he strode up the gangplank behind San. Taking no notice of those onboard, he set down his sack and took up a place by the railing. 

The ship’s captain called for them to cast off. Sailors scurried, ropes were untied, tossed, and tied again, and the ship lurched. His hands clasped the railing so hard they hurt, and San’s gripped his waist to the point he knew he would have bruises in the morning.

The current grabbed the ship, and the city began to diminish. The ocean breeze soon caressed his neck, but he never stopped staring at the city. He stared towards it until the glass castle was a sparkling speck in the distance. He stared toward it until there was only a glimmering ocean around him. He stared toward the city until the sun dropped beyond the horizon and the stars were a smattering above him. 

It was only when his eyelids drooped and he swayed on his feet, when San’s arms caught him before he hit the deck, that Wooyoung stopped staring toward the city.

The smell of salt filled his nostrils and a spirited wind whipped through his hair.

With a hiss through his teeth, Jung Wooyoung turned his back on Adarlan and sailed toward Wendlyn, arm in arm with Choi San.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well that was an adventure.
> 
> I'm really happy people are enjoying this! It warms my heart to have someone actually enjoy what I'm doing, and I hope you'll stick around!
> 
> I'm thinking about writing a Woosan one shot as well (nothing to do with this though) as I'm writing this so I hope that'll turn out half as good


	4. Heir of Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I do not permit mortals into Doranelle. For a mortal to enter my realm,” the queen’s gaze stayed fixed on Wooyoung. “You must prove yourself gifted and trustworthy enough to keep your princeling on a leash. Mistward, this fortress, is one of several proving grounds.”
> 
> “And what manner of test might I expect before I am deemed worthy?” San asked.
> 
> His aunt gestured to Mingi, who hadn’t moved from the door. “You shall come to me when Prince Mingi decides that you have mastered your gifts. And you and your princeling shall not set foot into Doranelle until then.”
> 
> But that could take weeks, months. Years. San felt the pit of nothing settle into his chest. “What I need to know can’t just wait-”
> 
> “You want answers regarding the king’s power? Then they shall be waiting in Doranelle. The rest is up to you.” Wooyoung’s tight grip on his hand told him what he needed to do.
> 
> “What manner of training can I expect?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING
> 
> This chapter gets graphic

There was only one thing Wooyoung had decided he really, truly hated. And that was teggya. The flatbread had been delicious the first day, slightly less delicious the next. 

Now, a month since he and San had arrived in Wendlyn, it was disgusting. He had never hated anything more. He supposed eating it every single day did that to a person. San seemed to hate it as much as he did. 

Money had grown short quickly. They had taken to lounging on the terracotta rooftops of the capital city and swiping teggya and water from vendors. When they got really, truly desperate to be all over each other, they would rent a small room for the night. Other than that, the rooftops made a nice place to rest.

Upon their arrival in Wendlyn borders Wooyoung had felt a tingling under his skin, one that hadn’t vanished in the month since it appeared. He kept meaning to ask San if he felt it too. It had taken Wooyoung until almost halfway into their voyage to realize why San had come to Wendlyn instead of heading north of Adarlan to his own kingdom.

San had just delivered himself to the kingdom he would be safest, where he would be most likely to raise an army. The homeland of his mother, the capital city ruled by his cousin, and the domain of his aunt, the Fae Queen across the sea. 

Wooyoung had been expecting to see many things, all kinds of new and exciting sights, in this new land. What he hadn’t expected to see was magic. Completely unabashed, unrestrained, magic. Fae populated everywhere he went. He had never seen so many in one place. He’d never seen them live so closely, so comfortably, with humans. 

And the magic. Oh, the magic. It was beautiful. Every Fae he met used some kind of elemental magic. Anything he could think of, there was someone that used that magic. On multiple occasions Wooyoung asked San to use his own. He refused every time. Each time he asked a flash of fear crossed San’s entire body. 

One morning, as they were walking together, San bumped into a man. He apologized profusely, but the man stood, a solid block in the road. He was tall, much taller than either of them. His hair was a light dirty blond, and Wooyoung belatedly realized he was Fae. He and San stared at each other, almost as if they were communicating silently. They must have come to some kind of agreement, as the new Fae male was muttering in a deep voice, “Lets go.”

San and Wooyoung followed him out of the city walls, leaving the capital behind without a second glance. 

***

Wooyoung had seen enough maps of Wendlyn to realize when they passed through mortal ruled lands and into the lands ruled by the Fae Queen. Humans became few and far between. The Fae male, named Mingi, was absolutely silent throughout the trip besides giving them a name to call him by.

San had yet to tell him what was happening, only giving reassurance that everything was fine. 

The fourth day of riding, Mingi veered them off the paths and along the mountain ranges instead. Wooyoung smelled rather than saw smoke and fire, and soon enough the smell was matched with the sight of a small fortress. It looked ancient. Fae males and females alike patrolled the walls with swords, daggers, and bows. Mingi led them along to the stables, where he dismounted his horse. It seemed he hadn’t accounted for San having someone with him, as he and Wooyoung had been riding together. San dismounted the mare and helped Wooyoung down.

They followed Mingi inside, let him lead them into the main building, up a set of narrow stairs, and into a small office. And seated in the intricately carved wooden chair behind the desk sat a woman. The Queen of the Fae.

San’s aunt.

“Hello, Choi San.”

***

San couldn’t breathe. He didn’t know why he had thought this would be easy. He backed away, but slammed into a hard body just as the door shut behind them - Mingi. 

His aunt was fearsome in her perfection. Utterly still, eternal and calm and radiating ancient grace. 

He really had fooled himself into thinking this would be easy. He was still pressed against Mingi as if he were a wall. Wooyoung’s hand clasped around his own was the only thing keeping him from bolting out the door. Had been the only thing keeping him grounded these past months.

The Queen of the Fae remained silent, her fingers folded in the lap of her violet gown. She didn’t bother with a crown, and San supposed she didn’t need to. Every creature on earth would know what she was. The face of a thousand legends.

San bowed low. He supposed he should have gotten on his knees but - he already smelled awful. As he rose, his aunt smiled faintly. 

“I suppose with a proper bath, you’ll look a good deal like your father.”

No exchanging pleasantries, then. He could handle it. He could ignore the terror to get what he wanted. “If I had known who I was meeting, I might have begged my escort for time to freshen up.” 

He didn’t feel bad for throwing Mingi to the wolves.

“You must be wondering why I’ve asked Prince Mingi to bring you here,” she mused. Prince. His aunt placed her hands on the desk. “I have been waiting a long time to meet you. As I do not leave my kingdom, I could not see you. Not with my own eyes.”

There were legends whispered in the night about the other skin the queen wore. No one had lived to tell anything beyond, shadows and claws and a darkness to devour your soul.

“But now you are here,” she said, seeming to come closer without moving. San felt Wooyoung tense beside him. “And a grown man. My eyes across the sea have brought such strange stories about you.”

“Enough.” San glanced at Mingi, who was listening intently, as if this was the first he was hearing of it. He didn’t want him knowing about his job - didn’t want that shame. “I know my own history.” He flashed Mingi a glare that told him to mind his own business.

“And your talents?” Her nostrils flared - scenting. “What has become of them?”

“Like everyone else on my continent, I haven’t been able to access them.”

His aunt’s eyes twinkled. “You are not on your own continent,” she purred. “Show me,” she whispered with a spider’s smile. 

“I can’t.”

The queen considered him. She stared at him, many moments too long. She settled back in the chair. “I do not have more time to spare you,” she said. “So let me be brief: my eyes have told me you have questions. Questions no mortal has the right to ask,” her dark eyes moved to Wooyoung, and San could feel Wooyoung’s on him. “About the king.” San opened his mouth, but his aunt held up a hand. “I will give you those answers. You may come to me in Doranelle to receive them.”

“Why not-”

A growl from Mingi at the interruption. 

“Because they are answers that require time,” she said, then slowly added, “and answers you have not yet earned.”

“You want me to show you my magic? I’ll show it to you. But not here.”

“I have no interest in seeing you drop your magic like a sack of grain at my feet. I want to see what you can do with it, Choi San. That currently seems like not very much at all.” San’s stomach tightened. “I want to see what you will become under the right circumstances.”

“I don’t-”

“I do not permit mortals into Doranelle. For a mortal to enter my realm,” the queen’s gaze stayed fixed on Wooyoung. “You must prove yourself gifted and trustworthy enough to keep your princeling on a leash. Mistward, this fortress, is one of several proving grounds.”

“And what manner of test might I expect before I am deemed worthy?” San asked.

His aunt gestured to Mingi, who hadn’t moved from the door. “You shall come to me when Prince Mingi decides that you have mastered your gifts. And you and your princeling shall not set foot into Doranelle until then.”

But that could take weeks, months. Years. San felt the pit of nothing settle into his chest. “What I need to know can’t just wait-”

“You want answers regarding the king’s power? Then they shall be waiting in Doranelle. The rest is up to you.” Wooyoung’s tight grip on his hand told him what he needed to do.

“What manner of training can I expect?” 

“Prince Mingi will explain the specifics. For now, he will escort you to your chamber to rest.”

***

After the queen’s command, San hadn’t bothered with goodbyes before walking out. Mingi had only cleared the way at her nod, and followed San and wooyoung into a narrow hallway that smelled of roasting meat and garlic. Wooyoung’s stomach grumbled, but he’d probably hurl his guts up the second he swallowed anything. 

The fear he’d felt when the Queen of the Fae looked at him was still pitted in his stomach. 

So he trailed Mingi down the corridor, down the stairs, each footstep alternating between iron-willed control and stumbling over his own feet. San’s hand kept him from hitting the stone floor. 

Ahead of him, Mingi’s own steps were silent on the dark stones of the hallway. The torches hadn’t been lit yet, and in the murky interior, he could hardly tell he was there. But he knew - if only because he could almost feel the ire radiating off him. At least one other person besides San wasn’t particularly thrilled about this bargain.

They encountered no one as they descended a winding set of stairs and started down another corridor. San finally opened up his mouth. 

“You must be very important to Her Immortal Majesty if she put you on nurse duty.”

“Given your history, she didn’t trust anyone but her best to keep you in line.”

Wooyoung had to wonder what history they were talking about. He could tell whatever self control Mingi’d had on their trek to the fortress was hanging on by a thread.

“Playing warrior in the woods doesn’t seem like the greatest indicator of talent.”

“I fought on killing fields long before you, your little human, or your great uncle were even born.”

He felt San bristle beside him - exactly like Mingi wanted. “Who’s to fight here besides birds and beasts?” 

Silence. Then, “The world is far bigger and more dangerous than you can imagine, boy. Consider yourself blessed to receive any training - to have a chance to prove yourself.”

Thankfully, San seemed to know when it was time to stop. He didn’t reply after that, sending them back into silence as they walked. Mingi dumped them in a fairly small, very cold room. It was little more than a prison cell, but Wooyoung figured they could make it work. He let Wooyoung take all but two steps into the room before he said, “Starting at dawn, you’ll earn your keep by helping in the kitchen, Prince.” It took a moment for him to realize he wasn’t speaking to San.

Well, that was new. “The kitchen?” 

Mingi bared his teeth in a grin. “Everyone pulls their weight here. Princes included. No one’s above some hard labor, least of all you.”

San sounded out from where he had placed himself on the bed tucked in the corner of the room. “For an old bastard, you certainly haven’t bothered to learn manners at any point in your existence.” Never mind that he looked to be in his early twenties. 

Mingi turned and slammed the door without so much of a goodbye beyond “Be ready at dawn.”

Once they had both bathed, they’d tumbled into bed together, and lay there for several hours. Wooyoung turned in San’s arms at one point, towards the small window to look out at the stars hanging above the fortress. He searched for the north star, the brightest of them all. 

The room really was cold. Wooyoung found warmth against San’s body, falling fast asleep to dreams of fire.

***

When Wooyoung awoke, San was already gone. He figured Mingi had come to steal him away for training before dawn. 

He found the kitchen fairly easy, the staff already bustling around. 

Despite his inexperience, the head cook welcomed him with a warm smile. Wooyoung found himself learning quickly. He was reminded of when he had wanted to learn to cook back home and thought this experience was better than anything he ever could have gotten at the castle. He wouldn’t mind staying here to continue learning for as long as San needed to train.

When neither San nor Mingi came to get breakfast, his suspicions were confirmed. He hoped San would come to dinner to see how well he was doing already.

***

San’s head was reeling. He’d been walked for miles out of the fortress, through temple ruins and into the forested foothills.

He was swaying on his feet when Mingi drew a sword and a dagger and stopped at the edge of a grassy plateau, speckled with small hills. Not hills, he realized - barrows, the ancient tombs of lords and princes long dead, rolling to the other edge of trees. There were dozens, each marked with a stone threshold and sealed iron door. And through the murky vision, the pounding headache, the hair on the back of his neck rose. 

The hills seemed to…breathe. To sleep. Iron doors - to keep the wights inside, locked with treasure they’d stolen. They infiltrated the barrows and lurked there for eons, feeding on whatever unwitting fools dared seek the gold within.

Mingi inclined his head toward the barrows. “I had planned to wait until you had some handle on your power - planned to make you come at night, when the barrow wights are really something to behold, but consider this a favor, as there are few who will dare come out in the day. Walk through the mounds - face the wights and make it to the other side of the field, San, and we can go to Doranelle whenever you wish.”

It was a trap. He knew that well enough. Mingi had the gift of endless time and could play games that lasted centuries. His impatience was being used against him. To face the wights… 

Mingi’s weapons gleamed, close enough to grab. He shrugged his powerful shoulders as he said, “You can either wait to earn your steel, or you can enter as you are now.”

His flash of temper snapped him out of it long enough to say, “My hands are enough.” Mingi just gave a taunting grin and sauntered into the maze of hills.

San trailed him closely, following him around each mound, knowing that if he fell behind, he’d leave him out of spite. 

Steady breathing and the yawns of awakening things arose beyond those iron doors. They were unadorned, bolted into the stone lintels with spikes and nails that were so old they probably predated Wendlyn itself.

His footsteps crunched in the grass. Even the birds and insects did not utter a too-loud sound here. The hills parted to reveal an inner circle of dead grass around the most crumbling barrow of all. Where the others were rounded, this one looked as if some ancient god had stepped on it. Its flattened top had been overrun with the gnarled roots of bushes; the three massive stones of the threshold were beaten, stained, and askew. The iron door was gone.

There was only blackness within. Ageless, breathing blackness. 

His heartbeat pounded in his ears as the darkness reached for him. “I leave you here,” Mingi said, he hadn’t set one foot inside the circle, his boots just an inch shy of the dead grass. His smile turned feral. “I’ll meet you on the other side of the field.”

He expected San to bolt like a damn hare. And he wanted to. Gods, this place, that damned barrow only a hundred yards away, made him want to run and run and not stop until he found a place where the sun shone day and night. But if he did this, then he could go to Doranelle tomorrow. And those wights waiting in the other half of the field couldn’t be worse than anything he had already seen.

So he inclined his head to Mingi, and walked into the dead field.

He wouldn’t stop, not with Mingi still watching him, not when he had so much to do. He didn’t dare to look too long at the open doorway and the thing that lurked beyond. Running, he remembered, only attracted some predators. So he kept his steps slow and called on every bit of his Fae instincts he had, even as the wight slunk closer to the threshold, no more than a ripple of ravenous hunger encased in rags. 

Yet the wight remained within its mound, even as he came close enough to drag into the barrow, as if it were… hesitating. 

He was just passing the barrow when a pulse of stale air pushed against his ears. Maybe running was a good idea. If magic was the only weapon against wights, then his hands would be useless. Still, the wight lingered beyond the threshold. 

The strange, dead air pushed against his ears again, a high pitched ringing wending itself into his head. He hurried, grass crunching. It wasn’t far now. 

San passed the central mound, cracking his jaw against the ringing in his ears, worse and worse with each step. Even the wight had cringed away. It hadn’t been hesitating because of him, or Mingi. 

The circle of dead grass ended a few steps away. Just a few, and then he could run from whatever it was that could make a wight tremble in fear. 

And then he saw him. A man standing behind the barrow.

Not a wight. He glimpsed only a flash of pale skin, night-dark hair, unfathomable beauty, and an onyx torque around his strong column of neck and - 

Blackness. A wave of it, slamming down on him. 

Not oblivion but actual dark, as if he had thrown a blanket over the two of them.

The ground felt grassy, but San couldn’t see it. Couldn't see anything.

Blood trickled his upper lip - a nosebleed. The pounding in his ears began to drown out his thoughts, any plan, as if his body were repulsed by the very essence of whatever this thing was. The darkness remained, impenetrable, unending. 

Nothing. Only endless black and the breathing of that thing coming closer and closer, reeking of carrion and dust and another scent, something he hadn’t smelled for a lifetime but could never forget, not when it had been coating that room like paint.

Breath on his neck, snaking up the shell of his ear.

He whirled, drawing in what very well may have been his last breath, and the world flashed bright. Not with clouds and dead grass. Not with a Fae prince waiting nearby. The room… 

This room… 

The servant woman was screaming. Screaming like a tea kettle. There were still puddles near the windows - windows San had sealed shut himself when a sudden storm had them whipping and flapping in a sudden storm. 

He had thought the bed was wet because of the rain. He’d climbed in because the storm had made him hear such horrible things, made him feel like there was something wrong, like someone had been standing in the corner of his bedroom. It was not rain soaking that bed in the elegantly rugged chamber of the country manor.

It was not rain that had dried on him, on his hands and skin and clothes. And that smell - not just blood, but something else.

“This is not real,” San said, backing away from the bed on which he stood like a ghost. “This is not real.”

But there were his parents, sprawled on the bed, their throats slit from ear to ear. 

Slaughtered like animals. The wounds were so vulgar, so gaping and deep, and his parents looked so, so - 

San vomited. He fell to his knees, his bladder loosening just before he vomited a second time. 

“This isn’t real, it’s not real,” he gasped as wet warmth soaked his pants. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t -

And then he was pushing to his feet, bolting away from that room, toward the wood paneled walls, through them like a wraith himself, until - 

Another bedroom, another body.

Seonghwa. Carved up, mutilated, violated, and broken.

That thing lurking up behind him slid a hand over his waist, along his abdomen, pulling him back against its chest with a lover’s gentleness. Panic surged, so strong that he slammed his elbow back and up - hitting what felt like flesh and bone. It hissed, releasing him. That was all he needed. He ran, treading through the illusion of his friend’s blood and organs, and then -

Watery sunlight and dead grass and a heavily armed blond warrior whom he sprinted toward, not caring about the vomit on his shirt, his soiled pants, the gasping, shrieking noise coming out of his throat. He ran until he reached him and fell to the grass, gripping it, shredding it, retching even though he had nothing left in him but a trickle of bile. He was screaming or sobbing or making no sound at all. 

And then he felt the surge, a well opening beneath his stomach and filling with burning, relentless fire. 

No. No. 

Agony cleaved him in a pulse. That wildfire rising and falling, reaching up, up… 

He really did scream then, because his throat burned, or maybe that was the magic coming out, at last unleashed.

Magic -

***

San awoke under the canopy of the forest. It was still daylight, and from the dirt on his shirt and pants and boots, it seemed Mingi had dragged him here from the barrows. 

“No discipline, no control, and no courage,” came a growling voice. Head throbbing, he found Mingi sitting on a rock, his arms braced on his knees. “You failed,” he said flatly. “You made it to the other side of the field, but I said to face the wights - not to throw a magical temper tantrum.”

“How dare-” he said, the words raw and gasping.

“That was not a wight, Prince.” Mingi flicked his attention toward the trees beyond him. He might have roared about using specifics to get out of his bargain to bring him to Doranelle, but when his eyes met San’s again, he seemed to say, That thing should not have been there.

Then what in the hell was it, you stupid bastard? he silently shot back.

He clenched his jaw before he said aloud, “I don’t know. We’ve had skinwalkers on the prowl for weeks but this… this was something different. I have never encountered its like. Thanks to having to drag you away, I don’t think I’ll learn any time soon.” He gave a pointed look at his current state. 

“I want to go back to the fortress,” he breathed. He didn’t want to know about the creatures or about the skinwalkers or about any of it. Each word was an effort. “Right now.”

“You’re done when I say you’re done.”

“You can kill me or torture me or throw me off a cliff, but I am done for today. In that darkness, I saw things that nobody should be able to see. It dragged me through my memories - and not the decent ones. Is that enough for you?”

Mingi spat out a noise, but got to his feet and began walking. He followed, staggering and stumbling, knees trembling, all the way to the halls of Mistward. He angled his body so none of the passing demi-Fae could see his soiled pants, the vomit. He kept his attention on the prince until he opened a wooden door and a wall of steam hit him. “These are the baths. Your room is a level up. Be in the temple ruins outside at dawn tomorrow.” And then he left him again. 

San trudged into the steamy chamber and shucked off his clothes, collapsed into one of the sunken stone tubs, and didn’t stir for a long, long while.

***

San hadn’t come to dinner. Wooyoung had been proud of himself the entire rush, managing to keep up with everyone else, but when Mingi came and San didn’t his mood soured. The head cook noticed and by the end of the rush, when the staff had time to eat themselves, he dismissed Wooyoung early. 

He brought some of the stew he had helped make along with a roll of bread and headed up toward his and San’s room. Thankfully, that was where he found him. The male was seated on the bed, his back to the door, looking out the small window. Wooyoung approached, placed a hand on his shoulder, and retracted it when San flinched. “It’s just me,” he murmured. 

San relaxed at the realization. Wooyoung sat beside him, offering the bowl, which was taken gratefully. “Was it that bad?” San paused with the roll halfway to his mouth. His eyes glazed over, appearing far away. “You don’t have to tell me.”

The roll resumed its path. He had learned over the past months to tell when San was troubled, often unable to do anything about it. He couldn’t begin to understand why those moments happened. 

San’s dinner was finished quickly, the bowl set aside, and Wooyoung was pulled into his arms as they laid down. He let San press himself against his back, and he swore he could feel his body shaking with small sobs.

***

The next morning, after breakfast was finished and the kitchen was cleaned, Wooyoung went out to the temple ruins to try and watch San’s training. He had been expecting to walk up to sights like the ones he had seen in the capital city.

What he hadn’t expected was to see the both of them seated across from each other, silently, as if in a battle of wills, with an unlit fire pit between them.

San returned that evening, in a better mood than he had found him the night before, and came to dinner with everyone else. He even praised Wooyoung for working so hard. 

This continued each day for weeks.

***

During one of their training sessions, where Mingi seated San down in front of the fire pit and told him to light it, San had had enough. 

“I can’t do it.”

“You can.”

“I can’t.”

Mingi looked up from where he had been tossing his dagger in the air and catching it. Bored. 

What an ass.

“You can light it. So do it.”

“Why don’t you show me how you do it, then?” Mingi glared at him, as if to say Just this once. And then the logs were frozen over, stuck in a block of solid ice. “Now you need to light it and unfreeze it.”

Still holding Mingi’s stare, San imagined phantom hands reaching into him and pulling out the wildfire. Imagined them pushing it out of him. But - nothing. 

“Sometimes I wonder whether this is a punishment for you,” he said through his teeth. “But what could you have done to piss off Her Immortal Majesty?”

“Don’t use that tone when you talk about her.”

“I can use whatever tone I want. And you can taunt me and snarl at me and make me chop wood all day, but short of ripping out my tongue, you can’t-”

Faster than lightning, his hand shot out and San gagged, jolting as he grabbed his tongue between his fingers. He bit down, hard, but he didn’t let go. “Say that again,” he purred.

San choked as he kept pinching his tongue, and he went for his daggers, simultaneously slamming his knee up between his legs, but Mingi shoved his body against his, a wall of hard muscle and several hundred years of lethal training trapping him against a tree. He was a joke by comparison.

He released San’s tongue, and he gasped for breath. He swore at him, a filthy, foul name, and spat at his feet. And that’s when he bit him. 

He let out a cry as those canines pierced the spot between his neck and shoulder, a primal act of aggression - the bite so strong and claiming it stunned him for a moment, too much to move. He had San pinned against the tree and clamped down harder, his canines digging deep, his blood spilling onto his shirt. Pinned like a weakling.

San growled, more animalistic than sentient being. And shoved.

Mingi staggered back a step, teeth ripping his skin as he struck his chest. He didn’t feel the pain, didn’t care about the blood or the flash of light.

No, he wanted to rip his throat out - rip it out for trying to lay a claim on him when he was already spoken for.

Mingi grinned. “There you are.” Blood - his blood - was on his teeth, on his mouth and chin. And those eyes glowed as he spat his blood onto the earth. 

San panted, even though his body told him he was not winded and no longer needed to take so many breaths. There was a tickling at his neck, his skin slowly beginning to stitch back together. He was a faster healer. Because of the magic.

Breathe. Breathe. 

But there it was, rising up, wildfire crackling in his veins, in his fingertips, the forest around them so much kindling, and then -

He shoved back. Took the fear and used it like a battering ram inside himself, against the power, shoving it down, down./

Mingi prowled closer. “Let it out. Don’t fight it.”

A pulse beat against him, nipping, smelling of snow and pine. Mingi’s power, taunting his own. Not like his fire, but a gift of ice and wind. A freezing zap at his elbow had him falling back against the tree. The magic bit his cheek now. Magic, attacking him.

The wildfire exploded out in a wall of blue flame, rushing for Mingi, engulfing the trees, the world, himself, until - 

It vanished, sucked out into nothing, along with the air he was breathing.

San dropped to his knees. As he clutched at his neck as if he could claw open an airway for himself, Mingi’s boots appeared in the field of his vision. He’d pulled the air out - suffocated his fire. Such power, such control. His aunt had not given him an instructor with similar abilities. She’d instead sent someone with power capable of smothering his fire, someone who wouldn’t mind doing it if he should become a threat. 

Air rushed down his throat in a whoosh. He gasped it down in greedy gulps.

“Does your lover know what you are?” A cold question.

San lifted his head, not caring how he’d found out. “He knows everything.” Not entirely true.

His eyes flickered. With what emotion, San couldn’t tell. “I won’t be biting you again,” he said, and he wondered just what he’d tasted in his blood. 

“Even if it’s the only way to get me to use it?”

He walked uphill - to the ridge. “You don’t bite those who belong to other males.”

Mingi didn’t stop him as he returned to the fortress. 

***

Thankfully, Wooyoung was already asleep when San arrived. He packed, taking all but a minute because he hadn’t even bothered to unload his sack. He left a kiss on Wooyoung’s forehead, then turned and left without looking back.

The lights of Mistward were fading into the distance when Mingi appeared, standing in between two trees in his path. “Is this what you do? Run away when things get hard?” 

He brushed past him, his legs burning with the downhill walk. “You’re free of your obligation to train me, so I have nothing left to say to you, and you have nothing left to say to me. Do us both a favor and go to hell.”

A growl. “You’re leaving your mate behind?” 

San let out a low, bitter laugh. “He’s safer here than if he’s with me.” He walked faster, veering westward, not caring about the direction as much as getting away from Mingi. But he kept up easily, his long legs devouring the ground. “You’re proving me right with every step you take.”

San turned on him, a nasty insult on his lips, when silence suddenly fell across the entire world. Everything was silent, the birds and insects. Everything. 

Mingi was suddenly pulling San against his chest, pressing them into what appeared to be a hollowed out tree. 

He kept his panting quiet, but breathing didn’t become any easier when Mingi gripped him by the shoulders and put his mouth to his ear. Crashing footsteps began to approach their tree. 

“You are going to listen to every word I say.” Mingi’s voice was softer than the wind in the night air. “Or else you are going to die tonight. Do you understand?” He nodded. Mingi let go - only to draw his sword and a wicked looking hatchet. “Your survival depends on you.” A rancid smell was going in the air, the smell of rotting.

A slow, shrieking sound of stone on metal sounded through the air. Then another. And another. They were sharpening their blades. “Your magic -”

“They do not breathe, so they have no airways to cut off. Ice will slow them, not stop them. My wind is already blowing our scents away from them, but not for long.” It was not a test. The skinwalkers needed no air. “When I say run, you run like hell. There is a river a third of a mile east, at the base of a cliff.” He didn’t look at San as he drew two long daggers, and he didn’t nod his thanks as he gripped the ivory hilts. “Step where I step, and don’t turn around for any reason. If we are separated, run straight - you’ll hear the river.” Order after order - a commander on the battlefield, solid and deadly. Mingi peered out of the tree. The smell was nearly overpowering now, swarming from every angle. “If they catch you, you cannot kill them, not with a mortal weapon. Your best option is to fight until you can get free and run. Understand?”

San gave a nod. Breathing was hard again. 

The skinwalkers spoke in low, strange voices - at once male and female, all ravenous. “Come out, come out,” one of them hissed, so close it could have been in the tree with them. There was a sudden rustling in the brush to the west, almost as if two people were running. Instantly, the skinwalkers’ reek lessened as they (from the sound of the footsteps, it sounded like there were three) raced after the cracking branches and leaves Mingi’s wind led in the other direction. 

“Now,” Mingi hissed, and burst out of the tree.

San ran, or tried to. Even with his sharpened Fae senses, the brush and stones and trees proved a hindrance. Mingi raced toward the rising roar of the river, swollen from the spring rains, his pace slower than he’d expected, but… he was slowing for him. 

It took all of a minute before the force of that smell returned and the snapping of the brush closed in. But he wouldn’t take his eyes off Mingi, and the brightening ahead - the end of the treeline. Not much farther until they could jump.

A fourth skinwalker leapt out of where it had somehow been hiding in the brush undetected. It lunged for Mingi in a flash of leathery long limbs marred with countless scars. Not scars, but stitches. Stitches holding its various hides together. 

He shouted as the skinwalker pounced, but Mingi didn’t falter a step as he ducked and twirled with inhuman speed, slashing with his sword and slicing with his hatchet. 

The skinwalker’s arm severed at the same moment its head fell off its neck. 

San glanced once at the body the Fae warrior had left in pieces. 

Sagging bits of leather on the wet leaves, like discarded clothes. But still twitching and rustling, as if waiting for someone to stitch it back together. 

He ran faster, Mingi still bounding ahead. 

The skinwalkers closed in from behind shrieking with rage. Then they fell silent, until, “You think the river can save you?” one of them panted, letting out a laugh that raked down his bones. “You think if we get wet we will lose our form? I have worn the skins of fishes when mortals were scarce.”

San had an image then, of the chaos waiting in that river. “Mingi,” he breathed, but he was already gone, his massive body hurtling straight off the cliff in a mighty leap.

There was no stopping the pursuit behind him. The skinwalkers were going to jump with them. And there would be nothing they could do to kill them, no mortal weapon they could use.

A well ripped open inside him, vast and unyielding and horrible. Mingi had claimed no mortal weapon could kill them. But what of immortal ones? 

San broke through the line of trees, sprinting for the ledge that jutted out, bare granite beneath him as he threw his strength into his legs, his lungs, his arms, and jumped.

As he plummeted, he twisted to face the cliff, to face them. They were no more than three lean bodies leaping into the night, shrieking with primal, triumphant, anticipated pleasure.

“Shift!” was the only warning he gave Mingi. There was a flash of light to tell him he’d obeyed, a white tailed hawk shrieking in the night to replace him. 

Then he ripped everything from that well inside him, ripped it out with both hands and his entire raging, hopeless heart. 

As he fell, San thrust his hands toward the skinwalkers. 

“Surprise.” The world erupted into blue fire.

***

San shuddered on the riverbank, from cold and exhaustion and terror - terror at what he had done, terror at the skinwalkers. 

His clothes dry thanks to shifting, Mingi stood a few feet away, monitoring the smoldering cliffs upriver. He’d incinerated the skinwalkers. They hadn’t even had a chance to scream. 

He hunched over his knees, arms wrapped around himself. The forest was burning on either side of the river, a radius he didn’t have the nerve to measure. It was a weapon, his power. A different kind of weapon than blades. A curse. 

It took several attempts, but at last he spoke. “Can you put it out?”

“You could, if you tried.” When San didn’t answer, he said, “I'm almost done.” In a moment the flames nearest the cliffs went out. How long had he been working to suffocate them? “We don’t need anything else attracted to your flames, anyway.”

He might have bothered to respond to the jab, but he was too tired and cold. For a while, silence reigned. 

“Why is this so vital?” he asked at last. 

“Because it terrifies you,” Mingi said. “Without control, with a blast like that, you could easily have burnt yourself out.”

“What do you mean?”

A stormy look. “When you access your power, what does it feel like?”

San considered. “A well,” he said. “The magic feels like a well.”

“Have you felt the bottom of it?”

“Is there a bottom?” He prayed there was.

“All magic has a bottom - a breaking point. It could take hours to hit the bottom, to summon their powers at full strength.”

“How long does it take you?”

“A full day.” San jolted. He shivered, and whispered hoarsely. “Thank you for saving me.”

A slight shrug, barely a movement at all. “I am bound by an unbreakable blood oath to my queen, so I had no choice but to save you. But,” he went on, “I would not have left anyone to a fate at the hands of the skinwalkers.”

“A warning would have been nice.”

“I said they were on the loose. Weeks ago. But even if i had told you today, you wouldn’t have listened.” It was true. He shivered again. Mingi was quiet for long enough that he wondered if he was piecing something together. “You’re not leaving,” he said at last, arms crossed. “I’m not letting you off training, but you’re not leaving.”

“Why?”

He unfastened his cloak. “Because I said so, that’s why.” And San might have told him it was the worst reason he had ever heard, and that he was an arrogant prick, had he not tossed him his cloak - dry and warm. 

When he turned to go back to the fortress, San followed him.

***

The first time San lit the fire pit, it had been an accident. 

Even after the event with the skinwalkers, Mingi hadn’t let up at all. 

During one of their stubborn training sessions, San had been thinking of what it would have been like to watch Mingi’s tail feathers burn that night and the pit had caught fire. 

It had made the both of them jolt in shock. 

After hours of threatening and arguing, San had managed to put it out. He could feel embers beginning to calmly burn from within him.

He had gone back to the fortress that night and excitedly shared what had happened with Wooyoung. 

***

As San’s training progressed over the weeks, Mingi had taken to having San create weapons with his flames, shields around his body with them. It allowed for training in magic as well as general combat. 

It was exhausting. 

He’d return to the fortress each night and collapse into bed, often leaving Wooyoung alone until he fell asleep himself. He could tell it was upsetting him. He could see it on the days he managed to stay awake.

San was determined to stay up with him. At least once. 

He was already struggling to keep his eyes open when Wooyoung came up to their room. When the door closed softly and he turned to face the bed, the way his face lit up upon seeing San (mostly) conscious was worth it. Wooyoung had crossed the room and found a home in his lap before he had even gotten a greeting out.

Their lips connected and San was suddenly not nearly as tired as he was before. The kiss was searing, weeks, even months at this point, of built up anticipation, just waiting for the time it could finally spill over. 

Wooyoung pulled away enough to pull San’s shirt over his head, cursing beneath his breath as his eyes devoured the sight before him. 

San leaned to bite down on Wooyoung’s neck, right on the prominent vein there, soothing the mark with his tongue. Wooyoung moaned softly, tilting his head to allow San more access as he ran his hands up and down his back. As he sucked on the expanse of skin before him, his hands reached down to grasp Wooyoung’s bottom. 

“San,” he whined, pulling away enough to shove his tongue into San’s mouth. The male groaned, pleased as he tugged him forward. He could feel Wooyoung’s dick through his pants, already half hard against him. 

“Would love to play with your ass all night,” he muttered against his lips.

“You can fuck with it while you’re inside me,” Wooyoung growled, undoing San’s pants and yanking them open. “Hurry up.”

“So needy,” San teased, bringing his hands to Wooyoung’s waist. 

Wooyoung grinned as he hummed, climbing backwards toward the pillows. He hooked his thumbs into his pants, pulling them down and off in one fluid motion, then tossing them aside.

San quickly removed his own pants, hissing as the cool air hit his throbbing cock. Wooyoung’s eyes lowered to it, pupils blown as he stared. San climbed up, a knee between the younger’s legs as his arms caged him in. Wooyoung inhaled deeply, staring up at San with hooded eyes as he licked his lips. San leaned down for a sloppy kiss, swallowing down Wooyoung’s moan. Wooyoung gripped San’s shoulders, trying to tug him closer as his hips lifted off the bed.

“San,” he whined, pouting. “Hurry up.”

“All right,” San chuckled, trying to pull away. “Let me get the oil-”

“You don’t need it.”

San eyed him. “Wooyoung, it’ll hurt.”

Wooyoung shook his head, a blush rising to his cheeks. “I already did it,” he muttered.

San couldn’t help the grin that spread over his lips. “Well, aren’t you full of surprises.”

“I didn’t think - aah,” he moaned as San prodded his prostate with a finger, tightening his grip on the older’s shoulders.

San began pumping his finger, finding the hole loose and still with the remnants of oil. After a few more thrusts, he added another finger, eying Wooyoung for any signs of discomfort, then slowly went deeper. Wooyoung simply moaned, throwing his head back as his chest heaved.

“S-San,” he whined. “I-I’m good.”

“Are you?” San teased, slowing his thrusts. “I think we could go a little longer.”

“No,” he whimpered, lips parted with his heavy breathing. “Please…” 

“Beg for it,” San muttered as he scissored his fingers wide, drawing a moan from Wooyoung. 

“You’re such an ass,” he huffed, turning his head to the side with a pout.

“Oh, look at that. You’re not stretched nearly enough.” San slammed his fingers against the bundle of nerves and Wooyoung cried out, hips bucking up.

“Come on!”

“I can do this all night, pretty.” San smirked, despite it being a bluff. “Tell me how bad you want it.”

Wooyoung panted heavily as his flush deepened. He threw his arm over his face. “I… I really want it.”

“Want what?”

“I want your cock…” 

“That doesn’t sound very-”

“Fine!” Wooyoung moved his arm, glaring. “I need your cock, Sannie! Please! I feel like I’m dying and I want it so bad!”

“That’s better,” San teased, pulling his fingers out. As Wooyoung muttered about him being “a total ass” he spit into his hand and slicked himself up.

He pushed the head in, groaning lowly as Wooyoung sighed. It was still fairly tight, but not painfully so. He rested on his forearms as he bottomed out, the two of them panting in the silence as Wooyoung adjusted. After a moment he clenched down, muttering for San to move.

San pulled out almost all the way out before slamming back in, the motion shoving Wooyoung up the bed slightly. The younger cried out as San shoved his legs open more, fingers digging into the thick thighs as he built up a fast pace. Wooyoung was moaning on practically every thrust, his back arching up as his eyes drooped. San leaned forward, angling his thrusts to ram into Wooyoung’s prostate and ripping cries from his throat. “S-so good! San, aah!” 

San leaned down to bite Wooyoung’s collarbone, drawing a high whine from the younger. He wrapped his arms around San’s neck as he sucked the skin.

“Fuck yes, San! Feels so good!” he babbled, moving his hips to meet San’s thrusts. “Don’t, don’t stop, please!”

“Gods, you’re noisy,” San laughed breathlessly, licking his way to where shoulder and neck met.

“C-can’t help it,” Wooyoung whimpered.

Before Wooyoung could continue with a snarky remark or whine, San pulled back, gripping his thighs and lifting them off the bed, bending Wooyoung in half. He cried out, struggling to find a grip as San placed his thighs on his shoulders, thrusting at a breakneck pace. The sound of skin slapping against skin and Wooyoung’s cries filled the air, a sound that San wanted to hear forever. 

Wooyoung gasped, reaching to grab San’s biceps. “‘M close, San!”

San slowed his thrusts to push in deeper. He leaned in to kiss Wooyoung, sucking on the bottom lip before licking his way into his mouth. Wooyoung moaned unabashedly as he lifted a hand to grip San’s hair, tugging at it lightly. Their tongues moved against each other lewdly.

He pulled away to increase his pace, panting on Wooyoung’s lips as he felt heat coiling in him. Not wanting to come first, San lowered his hand to Wooyoung’s neglected cock, which was weeping precome at this point. He began to stroke Wooyoung, who keened prettily and arched his back.

“Fuck fuck fuck!” Wooyoung whimpered, his pitch getting higher. “I-I need-”

“Go ahead and come, baby,” San panted, feeling his own orgasm approaching. 

Wooyoung nodded feverently, a tear slipping from the corner of his eye as he threw his head back. He practically screamed as he came, his hand in San’s hair tight and come spurting over his stomach. His hole clenched tightly around San and he cursed, thrusting once, twice more before crying out, burying his cock to shoot his seed deep into him. 

San rolled off of Wooyoung, lying beside him as he tried to catch his breath. As Wooyoung fell against him, his vision began to fade. He tried to sit up and fight his exhaustion, wanting to get the two of them cleaned up. But, Wooyoung pushed against his chest softly, urging him back onto the bed.

“Get some rest, San,” Wooyoung said quietly.

So he slept.

***

After weeks of training, San had been hoping Mingi would allow him to rest during the solstice, but he hauled him to a field atop the mountain plateau. San raised his brows at Mingi, who was standing in front of a massive pile of wood for the bonfire, flanked by two small unlit fires on either side. 

Around them, some of the demi-Fae were still hauling in more wood and kindling, others setting up tables to serve the food that the kitchen staff (and Wooyoung) had been laboring over without rest. 

“I assume you brought me here so I could practice?” 

“Ignite them, and keep the fires controlled and even all night.”

“All three.” Not a question. 

“Keep the end ones low for the jumpers. The middle one should be scorching the clouds.”

“This could easily turn lethal.”

Mingi lifted a hand and the wind stirred around him. “I’ll be here,” he said simply, eyes shining with arrogance he’d more than earned in his centuries of living.

“And if I somehow still manage to turn someone into a living torch?”

“Then it’s a good thing the healers are also here to celebrate.”

He gave him a dirty look and rolled his shoulders. “When do you want to start?”

His stomach clenched as Mingi said, “Now.”

***

He was burning, but remaining steady, even as the sun set and the field became packed with revelers. Musicians took up places by the forest edge and the world filled with ancient music that his flames moved with, turning into rubies and citrines and tigereyes and deepest sapphires. His magic didn’t manifest in just blue wildfire anymore; it had been slowly changing, growing, these past few weeks. No one really noticed him, but a few marveled at the flames that burned but did not consume the wood. 

Sweat rolled down every part of him, mostly due to the terror of people jumping over the lower burning bonfires. Yet Mingi remained beside him, murmuring as if he were a nervous horse. He focused on the flames and maintaining that shred of control, even though his blood was beginning to boil. A knot tightened in his stomach and he shifted. Gods, he was soaked. Every damn crevice was damp.

“Easy,” Mingi said as the flames danced a little higher.

“I know,” he gritted out. The music was already so inviting, the dancing around the fire so joyous, the food smelling so delicious… and here he was, far from it all, just burning. His stomach grumbled. “When can I stop?” He shifted on his feet again and the largest bonfire twisted, the flame slithering with his body. No one noticed. 

“When I say so,” he said. San knew he was using the people around them, his fear for their safety, to get him to master his control. 

“I’m sweating to death, I’m starving, and I want a break.”

“Resorting to whining?” But a cool breeze licked up his neck and he closed his eyes, moaning. He could feel Mingi watching him, and after a moment he said, “Just a little while longer.”

He almost sagged with relief, but opened his eyes to focus. He could hold out for a bit, then go eat and eat and eat. Maybe dance with Wooyoung.

But the music was so entrancing. He tapped a foot, bobbing his head, eyes on the three bonfires and the silhouettes dancing around them. He did want to dance. Not from joy, but because he felt his fire and the music meld and pulse against his bones. 

“Easy,” Mingi said, then added with a hint of surprise, “Let the music steady you.”

Gods, to be free like this… The flames roiled and undulated with the melody. 

“Easy.” He could barely hear him above the wave of sound filling him up, making him feel each tether binding him to the earth, each infinite thread. His eyes were stinging, almost blurry from staring so long at the flames, and a muscle in his back twinged. 

“Steady.” San didn’t know what he was talking about. The flames were calm, lovely. What would happen if he walked through them?

“That’s enough for now.” Mingi grabbed his arm, but hissed and let go. “That is enough.” 

Slowly, too slowly, he looked at him. His eyes were wide, the light of the fire making them almost blaze. He returned to the fire, submitted to it. The music and dancing continued, bright and merry. 

“Look at me,” Mingi said, but didn’t touch him. “Look at me.”

There was a pounding in him now, edged with pain. It was a knife that sliced into his mind and his body with each pulse. He couldn’t look at him, didn’t dare take his attention from the fire.

“Let the fires burn on their own,” Mingi ordered. He could have sworn he heard something like fear in his voice. It was an effort of will, and pain spiked down the tendons in his neck, but he looked at him. His nostrils flared. “San, stop right now.”

He tried to speak, but his throat was raw, burning. He couldn’t move his body. 

“Let go.” He tried to tell him he couldn’t, but it hurt. “If you don’t stop right now, you are going to burn out completely.”

Was this the end of his magic, then? A few hours of tending fires? Such a relief, if it were true.

“You are on the verge of roasting yourself from the inside out,” Mingi snarled.

He blinked, and his eyes ached as if there was sand in them. Agony lashed down his spine, so hard he fell to the grass. Light flared, not from him or Mingi, but from the fires surging. People yelled, the music faltered. The grass hissed beneath his hands, smoking. He groaned, fumbling for the tethers to the three fires.

“I’m sorry,” Mingi hissed, swearing, and then the air vanished. 

He tried to groan, to move, but he had no air. No air for that inner fire. Blackness swept in. 

Then he was gasping, arching off the grass, the fires now crackling naturally and Mingi hovering over him. “Breathe.”

Though he’d snapped the tethers to the fires, he was still burning. Not burning from the outside, where even the grass had stopped smoldering. 

He was burning up from within. Each breath sent fire down his lungs, his veins. He couldn’t move or speak. 

He shook with panicked sobs. It hurt. Death would be a mercy, cold, black haven. 

He didn’t know Mingi had left until he came sprinting back, Wooyoung and a Fae female in tow. One of them - he didn’t know who - said, “Can you stand to carry him? There are no water-wielders here and we need to get him into cold water. Now.”

He didn’t hear what else was said, heard nothing but a pounding forge under his skin. There was a grunt and a hiss, and then he was bouncing in Wooyoung’s arms, against his chest. Every step sent splinters of red hot pain through him. Though there was a frigid wind pressing on him, he was adrift in a sea of fire. 

He didn’t know how long it took, but his grasp on Wooyoung was weakening, each pulse of fiery pain fraying it.

But then it was darker than the woods, and the sounds echoed louder, and they took the stairs, and then - “Get him into the water.” 

He was lowered into the water in the sunken stone tub, then steam brushed his face. Someone swore. “Freeze it, Prince,” the second voice commanded. “Now.”

There was a moment of blissful cold, but then the fire surged.

“Get him out!” Wooyoung shrieked. Strong hands yanked at him and he had the vague sense of hearing bubbling. 

He had boiled the water in that tub. Almost boiled himself. He was in another tub a moment later, ice forming again. Then melting. Melting and - “Breathe,” Mingi said by his ear, kneeling at the head of the tub. “Let it go. Let it get out of you.”

Steam rose but he took a breath. “Good,” Mingi panted. Ice formed again. Melted. 

Like the ebb and flow of the tide, the bath froze, then melted, froze, then melted, slower each time. And each time, the cold soaked into him a bit more, numbing him, urging his body to relax. 

His body ached, but now the pain was dulled. His cheeks were still aflame, but the water went cold, then lukewarm, then warm, and stayed that way. Warm, not hot. 

“We need to get those clothes off him,” the female said. San lost track of time as she and Wooyoung eased up his head and then stripped off his sodden clothes. Without them he was almost weightless in the water. He lay there, eyes shut, face tilted toward the ceiling.

After a while, Mingi said, “Just answer yes or no. That’s all you have to do.” He managed a slight nod, though he winced at the pain that shot down his neck and shoulders. “Are you in danger of flaring up again?”

“No,” he whispered, a brush of hot air from his tongue. 

“Are you in pain?” Not a sympathetic question, but a commander assessing his soldier’s condition. 

“Yes.” A hiss of steam. 

The female said, “We will prepare a tonic. Just keep him cool.” Soft feet padded out, then came the shick of the door closing. There was a slosh of water in a bucket.

San sighed, or tried to, as an ice cold cloth was laid on his forehead. More sloshing, then another cloth dripped freezing water onto his hair, his neck. 

“The burnout,” Mingi said quietly. “You should have told me you were at your limit.”

Speaking was too hard, but he opened his eyes to find him kneeling next to the bath, Wooyoung at the head beside a bucket of water and a cloth in his hands. He wrung it again over his brow, the water so wonderful he would have moaned. The bath cooled further but was still warm.

“If you’d gone on any longer, the burnout would have destroyed you. You must learn to recognize the signs - and how to pull back before it’s too late.” Not a statement, but a command. “It will rip you apart inside. Make this look like nothing. You don’t touch your magic until you’ve rested for a while. Understand?” 

He tilted his head up, beckoning for more water on his face, but Mingi refused to allow Wooyoung to wring it again until he nodded his agreement. He cooled him off for another few minutes, then stood. “I’m going to check on the tonic. I’ll be back soon.” He left once San nodded again. He watched Wooyoung’s expression as the Fae warrior closed the door, one filled with a hate he had never seen on the pretty face.

Wooyoung continued to wring cold water over his forehead, his cheeks, his eyes. The silence was broken by a sniffle. Then another. And another. They continued until they evolved into full sobs. The only thing San could do to calm him without sending pain sparking through his body was hold his hand. 

He sat in the tub for hours. Until he was shivering. Wooyoung had calmed down enough to snatch a robe hanging from the wall, help maneuver him out of the tub and wrap him in it. He carried him to their room, laid him down and wrapped himself around him. The tonic was delivered to the room by the same female from before, and Wooyoung helped him gulp it down. 

As his eyelids drooped and sleep threatened to take him into its embrace, something molten rushed through him, pouring over every crack and fracture still left gaping and open. Not to hurt or mar - but to weld.

To forge.

***

San didn’t get out of bed the next day. Or the next day. Wooyoung brought him meals on a tray. When he wasn’t down in the kitchen, he was in bed with San.

On the second day he looked at San, his bottom lip nervously sucked between his teeth. “What’s wrong?” San asked.

Wooyoung shook his head. “It’s not important.”

“Tell me.”

Wooyoung pushed out a sigh. “How old are you?” 

“Twenty-one. Why?” San arched a brow.

“Aren’t you immortal?” 

San settled into the pillows. “Technically, yes. I haven’t settled into my immortality yet.”

“But you are immortal. You’ll live for a long time.” He could see darkness hovering in Wooyoung’s expression. 

“Yes.” 

The darkness deepened further. “You’re not going to want me anymore when I’m too old to move and you still look like this.”

It was then that it dawned on San. Wooyoung would grow old and die one day. He would have to leave San alone. “Wooyoung-”

“Is there a way to make a mortal immortal?” He sounded so desperate. Like his entire life would end here and now if there wasn’t. San didn’t want to end it. “There isn’t.”

Tears formed in Wooyoung’s eyes immediately. As if they had already been there, just waiting for the inevitable. San grasped his face in his hands. “We’ll find a way to make this work, I promise.”

“I love you.” 

San’s heart almost stopped. They had been dancing around those words for months. Since even before Seonghwa died. He should have expected them, should have been able to formulate the proper response to it. “Say it again.”

“I love you,” he repeated. 

“Again.” 

Wooyoung laughed, his tears forgotten already. “Just say it back, Sannie.”

“I love you, too.”

***

On the fourth day, Mingi came to their room. His face was grave, darker than San had seen it yet.

“Neither of you are to leave the fortress without me.”

San’s expression twisted into something dangerous. “And what makes you so special to be able to nurse me everywhere I go?”

Mingi ignored his remark. “Three bodies have been found. All demi-Fae, all male. They all looked as if life itself had been sucked out of them. Each body was found closer to the fortress.”

“Do you think it has something to do with the thing at the barrows?” 

Mingi stared at him, as if saying I think it has everything to do with it.

Then what do we do? San countered.

“We hope the stone wards hold up long enough for it to get bored.”

***

Mingi burst into the room, successfully waking both San and Wooyoung. It had been two months since the burnout, since the bodies had been found. 

“I think we’ve been betrayed,” Mingi said, and San’s fingers began trembling where he was trying to put on his newly fashioned sword belt. He turned to the open window. Quiet. Absolute quiet in the forest. 

And along the horizon, a growing smear of blackness. “It’s coming tonight,” he breathed. 

“I did a sweep of the perimeter.” Mingi stuffed a knife into his boot. “It’s like someone told it where every trap, every warning bell is located. It’ll be here within the hour.”

“Are the stone wards still working?” 

“Yes, they're still intact. I raised the alarm, and the others are readying our defenses on the walls.” A small part of him smiled at the thought of a half dressed Mingi barking orders at Fae and demi-Fae. 

He asked, “Who would have betrayed us?”

“I don’t know, and when I find them, I’ll splatter them on the walls. But for now we have bigger problems.”

The darkness on the horizon had spread, devouring the stars, the trees, the light. “What is that?” Wooyung breathed.

Mingi’s mouth tightened into a thin line. “Bigger problems.”

***

The stone wards were the last line of defense before the fortress itself. If the creature wanted to lay siege to Mistward, they couldn’t outlast it forever, but hopefully the barrier would wear it and its power down a bit. Birds and animals streamed past the fortress as they fled, an exodus of flapping wings, paddling feet, claws clicking on stones. Whatever darkness the creature brought… once you went in, you did not come out. 

He was standing with Mingi just beyond the gates of the courtyard, the greasy expanse of earth between the fortress and the stone wards feeling too small. The animals had stopped appearing moments ago, and even the wind had died.

“As soon as the barrier falls, I want you to put arrows through its eyes,” Mingi said to him, his bow slack in his hands. “Don’t give it a chance to enthrall you - or anyone.”

San nodded, gripping his own bow. “What about magic?”

“Use it sparingly, but if you think you can destroy it with it, don’t hesitate. And don’t get fancy. Take it down by any means possible.” Such icy calculation. Purebred, undiluted warrior. He could almost feel the aggression pouring off of him. 

A reek was rising from beyond the barrier, and some of the sentries in the courtyard behind them began murmuring. A smell from another world, from whatever hellish creature lurked under mortal skin. Some straggling animals darted out of the trees, foaming at the mouth, the darkness behind them thickening. “Mingi,” he said as he felt rather than saw it. “It’s here.”

At the edge of the forest, hardly five yards from the stone wards, the creature emerged. There was that same perfect male, looking straight at him. Smiling. As if he could already taste him.

A rabbit bolted out of the bushes, racing for the stone wards. Like the paw of a massive beast, the darkness behind the creature lashed out, sweeping over the fleeing animal. 

The rabbit fell mid leap, its fur turning a dull grey, bones protruding through as if the life had been sucked out of it. The sentries on the walls and towers stirred, some swearing. 

There was nothing San or Mingi could do as a whip of darkness snapped out and struck the invisible barrier. The air shuddered and the stones whined. 

Mingi was already moving to the oak doors, shouting orders to the archers to ready themselves and use whatever magic they could to shield themselves against the oncoming darkness. San remained where he was. Another strike, and the barrier rippled.

“San,” Mingi snapped, and he looked over his shoulder at him. “Get inside the gates.”

But he slung his bow across his back, and when he raised his hand, it was consumed with fire. “In the barrows that day, it balked from the sunlight.”

“To use it, you would have to get outside the barrier, or it’ll just rebound against the walls.”

“I know,” he said quietly. 

“The last time, you took one look at that thing and fell under its spell.”

The darkness lashed again. 

“It won’t be like last time.” Not when he had a score to settle. His blood heated, but he said, “I don’t know what else to do.”

A cry sounded behind them, followed by a few more, then the clack of metal on metal. Someone shouted, “The tunnel! Soldiers have been let in through the tunnel!”

For a moment, San just stood there blinking. The escape tunnel. Someone had betrayed them. 

The shouting and fighting grew louder. Mingi had stationed the weaker fighters inside to keep them safe - kept Wooyoung in there - right in the path of the tunnel entrance. It would be a slaughterhouse. 

Another blow to the barrier, and another. He began walking toward the stones, and Mingi growled. “Do not take one more step-”

He kept going. Inside the fortress, screaming had begun - pain and death and terror. Each step away from it tore at him, but he headed toward the stones, the megalith gates. Mingi grabbed his elbow. “That was an order.”

He knocked his hand away. “You’re needed inside. Leave the barrier to me.”

Mingi looked at the stones, at the fortress and the sentries scrambling to help below. Weighing, calculating. At last, he said, “It will attack you the moment you set foot outside the barrier. Have a shield ready.”

“I know” was his only answer as he neared the barrier and the swirling dark beyond. 

San stepped under the archway of stones, magic zinging and kissing his skin. He could feel Mingi lingering, to see if he would survive the first moments. But he would - he was going to burn this thing into ash and dust. 

The darkness lashed the moment he passed beyond the invisible barrier. 

A wall of flame seared across the spear of darkness, and, just as he’d gambled, the blackness recoiled. Only to strike again, swift as an asp. 

He met it blow for blow, willing the fire to spread, a wall of red and gold encasing the barrier behind him. He ignored the hollowness in his ears, the overwhelming throbbing in his head, so much worse beyond the barrier. But he did not give the creature one inch, even as blood began trickling from his nose. 

But the darkness paused, and he used its distraction to draw his sword. The creature hissed at the sword. “Goldryn.” He lifted the sword higher.

“But you are not Athril, beloved of the dark queen,” it said. “And you are not Brannon of the Wildfire.”

“How do you-” But the words caught in his throat as a memory struck from a lifetime ago. Of stories of an ancient magic that could open portals to other worlds. What if the king of Adarlan, upon stumbling across these stories, had learned how to do it? To open doors to other worlds?

Oh gods. “You are the Valg,” he breathed.

The thing in mortal flesh smiled. “The last of my kind.”

The Valg prince seemed to reach toward him without moving an inch. He sent a punch of flame at him, and he curled back. The king of Adarlan had to be the most foolish man to ever live if he thought he could control this demon prince.

Blood dripped onto his tunic from his nose. The demon purred, “Once you let me in, boy, there shall be no more blood, or pain.”

Mingi had not come back to help. 

His lower back cramped. A muscle twinged near his spine, twisting until he had to bite down a scream as he deflected blow after blow. It couldn’t be a burnout, not after practicing so much, not so soon.

The prince was closing in. He growled and sent a wall of flame at him, pushing him back, back, back, while he took a deep breath.

But blood came coughing out instead of air. 

His knees quaked, but he swallowed the blood in his mouth and took another breath.

He had not imagined it would end like this. And maybe he deserved it, after turning his back on his kingdom. 

He coughed blood again, splattering it on the ground - on the legs of the Valg prince.

It advanced, and part of him was screaming at himself to get up, to keep fighting, to rage and roar against the horrible end. But moving his limbs, even breathing, had become a monumental effort.

He was so tired. 

The demon said something that had him raising his head. It took his face in it’s hands, and his sword thudded to the ground, forgotten. The creature pulled him into its arms as he stopped fighting. 

As his flames winked out and darkness swallowed him whole. 

***

There was blood everywhere. 

As before, San stood between the two bloody beds, reeking breath caressing his ear, his neck, his spine. He could feel the Valg prince roving around him, circling and devouring his misery and pain bit by bit.

Seonghwa’s corpse, mangled and mutilated. Because he had been too late, and because he had been a coward.

And his parents, throats slit ear to ear, grey and lifeless. From an attack they should have sensed. An attack he should have sensed. Maybe he had sensed it, and that was why he had crept in that night. But he had been too late then as well.

A claw scraped along his neck and he jerked away, stumbling toward his parents’ corpses. 

Though his corpse remained lifeless on the bed, Seonghwa’s voice whispered, Coward. 

He pressed his palms against the wall and squeezed his eyes shut. “I know. I know.”

He did not fight as darkness swallowed him whole and dragged him down deep.

***

“Still not asleep?” his mother asked. The maid rose from beside the bed. After a few warm words, she left, smiling at them both. 

His mother curled up on the mattress, drawing him in close. “I’m sorry,” his mother whispered onto his head. For his dreams had been of drowning, drowning to put out the flames. “I am so sorry, Fireheart.”

He buried his face in his mother’s chest, savoring the warmth.

“Are you still frightened of sleeping?”

He nodded, clinging tighter.

“I have a gift, then.” When he didn’t move, his mother said, “Don’t you wish to see it?”

He shook his head. He didn’t want a gift. 

“But this will protect you from harm, keep you safe always.”

He lifted his head to find his mother smiling at him as she removed the golden chain and heavy, round medallion from beneath her nightgown. 

He looked at the amulet, then at his mother, eyes wide. 

The heirloom honored above all others of their house. 

***

He had lost the amulet. Lost it the very next day when he jumped into the river.

After he had watched his maid be butchered alive trying to save his life.

After he had been chased through the forests.

He didn’t know how long he lay on the bottom of whatever this was, but eventually the Valg prince started up again, barely more than shadows of thought and malice as he stalked from memory to memory. 

There was a scrape and crunch of shoes, then a small, smooth hand slid toward him. But it was not Seonghwa or his parents who lay across from him, watching him with those sad grey eyes.

His cheek against the moss, the young prince he had once been - Choi San - reached for a hand for him. “Get up,” he said softly.

San shook his head. 

San strained for him, bridging that rift in the foundation of the world. “Get up.” A promise. A promise for a better life, a better world. 

The Valg prince paused.

“Get up,” someone said beyond the young prince. Seonghwa, standing just beyond where he could see, smiling faintly.

“Get up.” Two voices together - his mother and father. His uncle was beside them, the crown of his kingdom on his silver hair. “Get up,” he told him gently.

One by one, like shadows emerging from the mist, they appeared. Faces of people he had loved with his heart of wildfire. 

And then there was Wooyoung, smiling beside his parents. “Get up,” he whispered, his voice full of hope for the world, his black hair gracing his cheekbones. 

A tremor in the darkness. 

There was solid ground beneath him. Moss and grass. The earth on which his kingdom stood, green and mountainous, and as unyielding as its people. His people.

His people, waiting ten years, but no longer. 

Choi San smiled at him, hand still outstretched. “Get up,” the prince said.

San reached across the earth between them and brushed his fingers against San’s.

And arose. 

***

The darkness built and built, and he knew it would hurt, knew it would likely kill him when it came crashing down. But he would not run from it. 

The wave of impenetrable black descended, roaring as it made to devour him. 

Yet this was not the end - this was not his end. He had survived loss and pain and torture. Had survived hatred and despair; he would survive this too. 

The black wave was not halfway fallen when he shattered it with golden light. He did not give him a moment to spool the darkness back. Drawing power from the endless well within himself, he pulled up fire and light, embers and warmth, the glow of a thousand dawns and sunsets. 

The prince was shrieking. The Valg did not want to go back; it did not want to be ended, not after so long spent waiting to come to his world. But he crammed the light down his throat, burning up his black blood.

The demon crawled only two steps before a silent scream painted his perfect face as he was incinerated. When the light and flames receded, all that remained of the Valg was an onyx collar.

***

San slept for two days.

He hardly remembered what happened after he incinerated the Valg prince. 

He could vaguely recall the fortress being under control. They only lost fifteen, the Valg wanting to capture rather than kill the demi-Fae to take back to Adarlan. The remaining soldiers had been captured and put in prison cells, but they were all dead by morning. Poisoned themselves.

The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was a head of long black hair. He breathed in, found a scent so purely Wooyoung, and sighed. The sound made him stir from his own slumber, eyes opening slowly to look at San. 

“Hi,” he mumbled.

“Hello, pretty.” San grinned, pulling Wooyoung impossibly closer to him. 

In the haze of the morning, Wooyoung sleepily spoke into his chest. “Mingi said he’ll take you to Doranelle whenever you want.” San took in a breath, easier than it had been in months.

“I don’t need to go,” he said. “I got all the answers I needed here.”

***

Just over a week later, they were boarding the ship at nightfall, herded into the galley to keep passengers from learning the route through the reef. When they were finally allowed on deck, San and Wooyoung were met with dark open ocean around them. A white tailed hawk flew overhead, and it swooped low to brush its wing against their cheeks in farewell before it turned back with a sharp cry.

San would free magic and destroy the king and save his people, and unite two warring kingdoms. No matter the odds, no matter how long it took, no matter how far he had to go. He lifted his face to the stars. 

Wooyoung’s head against his shoulder made him believe it wouldn’t take as long as he feared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew that was long.
> 
> Like seriously. This chapter just doubled the word count alone.
> 
> I really enjoyed getting more of San's perspective in and some more insight on his character this time around.
> 
> If you made it all the way through, congrats! I hope you'll stick around until the end!


	5. King of Shadows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> San was listening with everything he had, even though he was still exhausted from the long ride. “It took a while, but we think we figured out why magic vanished.”
> 
> “What do you think?” If Yeosang and Jongho were right in their theory, it could change everything. If San could use his magic here, he would be able to handle the king easily. 
> 
> “There are three clock towers on the continent. All of them were being built before the war, and the one in Rifthold was completed around the same time magic disappeared. We think,” Yeosang leaned over the table. “If one of the clock towers is destroyed, magic will return.”

Seeing the mountains of the northern Fae kingdom again felt like a stab to the chest for San. Seeing everything he had abandoned for the first time in a decade was overwhelming. He hadn’t been ready for it. He was only here now from Wooyoung’s insistence. He had claimed San would be too recognizable now, even if he started dying his hair again. The king would be looking for anyone with silver eyes after he had practically announced he was alive and kicking at the end of this summer in Wendlyn. 

So to the Fae kingdom, it was. It had added an extra month and a half to the already slow trip by sea. Snows were already beginning to fall, but refusing to stick. 

San could only watch as Wooyoung took in the sights with wonder in his eyes from the back of his horse. It pulled a smile to his face, though it faded just as quickly as it had come.

He didn’t have the heart to tell him he had settled before leaving Wendlyn. He couldn’t bring himself to do it, no matter how many times he could have in their conversations. 

He would give up his immortality if only he knew how, but it seemed the gods refused to listen to his pleas.

They were still a long journey from the capital - from his home - a week, at most. The ship had refused to come anywhere near it. It had just barely crossed into the borders of the kingdom. There was a fortress between them and there, a perfect place to stop and rest somewhere that wasn’t on the ground and under a tree. San was honestly surprised with how well Wooyoung had been handling all the travel. For someone who had lived in a castle all his life, been given everything he wanted all that time, he was always in good spirits even in the roughest of times.

It was almost nightfall by the time they reached the fortress. It was larger than Mistward had been, more enforced and protected, and had a small village surrounding it inside its walls. Most people they passed were Fae, survivors of the massacre that had seeked out somewhere safe to live, though there were humans as well. It wasn’t unlike the human-ruled capital of Wendlyn. 

San was tying and securing their horses in the small stable outside the local inn, Wooyoung beside him with watchful - learning - eyes, when the sound of firewood dropping and a gasp sounded behind them. 

***

Wooyoung had hardly turned around to see what the fuss was about when he was met with a head of golden blond hair and practically being strangled in a hug. 

When his brain finally caught up and he realized who this person was, he could’ve cried. 

He hadn’t seen his best friend in months. Having him suddenly clung to him, his own body shaking with barely restrained sobs, was almost too much for his heart. 

Hands on Yeosang’s shoulders, he pulled out of his grasp. He took in his friend, the tear tracks drying on his face. He was all the same, just how Wooyoung remembered him. The only difference was a small scar, under his eye and gracing his birthmark.

“I thought I would never see you again. When I heard you went missing, we all thought you would be dead,” Yeosang was rambling, but Wooyoung hushed him gently. “What happened to you?” he asked, his fingers running over the new mark.

Yeosang’s eyes flicked to San over his shoulder, then back to Wooyoung. His voice lowered, he finally said, “Come with me.”

***

“We didn’t leave Rifthold. We did at first, but then turned back.”

They were seated in Yeosang and Jongho’s small home, the three of them. Jongho was out for the moment. “Something seemed so off the moment we stepped out of the city. So we came back to figure out what it was.”

San was listening with everything he had, even though he was still exhausted from the long ride. “It took a while, but we think we figured out why magic vanished.”

“What do you think?” If Yeosang and Jongho were right in their theory, it could change everything. If San could use his magic here, he would be able to handle the king easily. 

“There are three clock towers on the continent. All of them were being built before the war, and the one in Rifthold was completed around the same time magic disappeared. We think,” Yeosang leaned over the table. “If one of the clock towers is destroyed, magic will return.”

***

As much as San wanted to turn around and go to Rifthold that night, Wooyoung convinced him to stay at least until morning. After saying goodbye to Yeosang, they returned to the inn to rent a room. 

Wooyoung thought the theory made sense. From what he could remember, his father had refused to talk to anyone about the purpose of the clock towers. The more he thought about it the more it seemed to fall into place. 

The only issue was how to destroy the tower itself. Even if they could get into Rifthold unnoticed, they had no way of actually carrying out anything. 

Wooyoung quit mulling over it, finding nothing useful coming out of it anyway, and turned his attention to San. He was curled up against the male to fight the cold even the fire in the hearth couldn’t battle. 

San had been somewhat distant. Wooyoung couldn’t place why, but he let it be. He couldn’t begin to imagine what San had seen when the demon in Wendlyn took him under. He hadn’t been told anything beyond the bare minimum. 

He was just beginning to work up the nerve to ask him when their door was rapped at. San was at attention in an instant, already working his way off the bed. He only took enough time to grab a dagger from his discarded belt before approaching the door. 

San pulled the door open just enough to poke his head around it and froze. Wooyoung was leaning this way and that way to see around him, see who the guest was but to no avail. He watched as San pulled the door open further, letting a tall man in a hood step inside. The newcomer tossed off the hood, and what Wooyoung saw shocked him to his very core.

Mingi. 

Wooyoung didn’t like Mingi from the start. At first it had been his lack of empathy and his coldness. Then, as San’s training progressed and took a turn for the better, it had been because of jealousy. San had been spending more time with Mingi than he had with him, and it had even started to seem like the two were becoming a bit friendlier with each other. The final nail in the coffin had been San’s burnout. He could still see San in that pain, pain that must have been excruciating, and Wooyoung had blamed Mingi for the whole thing. 

He didn’t get time to question the male before San started speaking first. “Did you follow us?”

Mingi, in his usual way, took no notice of the attempt at humor and teasing. “The barrow wights disappeared after you left. I tracked them to the coast, being hauled off by Adarlanian soldiers. I followed them a ship behind, but lost track of them and ended up here. Then I followed your scents.” 

San went pale. Wooyoung had heard stories of wights before, and they always gave him nightmares. “What would soldiers want with them?” San asked. Mingi looked towards Wooyoung, as if he had an answer, and San followed suit. 

“I don’t know. I swear.”

Mingi didn’t let up on his stare, but San had enough sense to believe his desperate tone. “Was it just the ones at the barrows?” Mingi shook his head once. “Wights all over Wendlyn have vanished.”

Wooyoung felt like he was going to be sick, and San didn’t look far behind as Mingi said, “Your king is trying to build an army that can’t be killed.” 

San was doing a much better job pulling himself together than Wooyoung, who felt like he would vomit if he even opened his mouth to breathe. He didn’t know how San did it. “Then we can’t wait. We need to go to Rifthold now.”

Mingi stopped him from leaving with a hand on his arm. “You aren’t going anywhere. There’s a storm coming from where I came from in the west.” Wooyoung heard San swear quietly, and then he was sitting back on the bed beside him. He swallowed down the feeling rising up his throat enough to grasp San’s hand. “Sannie, you can’t take him head on without magic.”

San sighed next to him and gave in, leaning himself against Wooyoung. Mingi continued speaking, falling into the commander calm Wooyoung had only seen the night Mistward was attacked. “I came a ship behind the soldiers, and my mate was a ship behind me. He should be here within the week, even with the storm.”

San’s head popped up from where it was resting on Wooyoung’s shoulder. “Mate? You have a mate? You?” Wooyoung was sure his look of shock was mirrored on his own face. Mingi simply looked at them.

“I am over four hundred years old. Of course I have a mate.”

San only laughed and showed Mingi to where he could rent himself a room. 

Wooyoung was able to sleep soundly, curled up in San’s arms, knowing Mingi harbored no feelings for his lover. 

***

The storm hit before the next morning. 

San spent most of the morning in bed with Wooyoung, the latter still fast asleep for the majority of that. Once he managed to wake him and convince him to take a warm bath together, he sat himself at the small dining table the inn provided each room with and stared out the window. 

Knowing what the king was trying to do now that he had lost his only Valg prince made him feel sick. The single wight he had seen in the barrows had been enough for a lifetime. If he had an entire army made up of them, what kind of damage could he do? Mortal weapons couldn’t do much against them. The only option left was to figure out how to destroy the clock tower, and quickly. 

San was dragged out of his thoughts by movement outside the window. Who would be insane enough to go outside during this weather, he thought. Then he took a second look and all his thoughts vanished. 

It was faded, but there was no mistaking it. 

Bright red hair. 

San was outside before he knew it, giving Wooyoung only a quick “I’ll be right back”.

***

It took way too long for his liking, but he had finally found the house he had seen the person disappear into. It took even longer for him to work up the courage to knock. His cheeks and nose had to have been pink from cold by the time he did. 

His heart almost stopped when the door opened. He had been right.

Hongjoong. 

“San?” 

It took all his effort just to nod. 

Hongjoong was grabbing his arm and tugging him inside before he realized it. “Get in here, it’s freezing.”

The door closed and San was faced with a home similar to Yeosang and Jongho’s. It was cozy, a fire burning to keep it warm inside. San seated himself on a nearby couch, and Hongjoong sat across from him. 

Silence dragged on and it gave him time to take Hongjoong in. His hair was indeed very faded, and while he didn’t look as hollow as he had the last time San saw him, there was still something missing in his eyes. He didn’t know why he had thought it was a good idea to come chasing after him. Maybe he had just wanted to know, or maybe he was still desperately trying to hold on to something that was long gone. 

“You put on a nice show in Wendlyn this summer, didn’t you?”

“I guess I did.”

Hongjoong smiled, but still, there was something missing in his eyes. San couldn’t take it anymore.

“I miss him.”

The smile fell, and Hongjoong’s eyes fell to his hands crossed in his lap, to the band he still wore. “I do too.” 

San willed himself to ask the question he had been dreading since that night. “Where is he?”

“Out by the river. When the storm is over, you can go out there. You’ll know it when you see it.”

San nodded, and silence fell again.

***

Meeting Yunho had been the exact opposite of meeting Mingi. Where Mingi was cold, Yunho was all warmth. Some would say they balance each other out, but Wooyoung thought the difference was too staggering.

It had been two days and the storm still hadn’t let up. Yunho still managed to arrive only two days after Mingi, much earlier than the latter had predicted. 

Though he was kinder than Mingi, there was still no denying that he was pure Fae warrior. It seemed he was already caught up on the situation, and whenever it came up, he fell into the same calm Mingi did.

Sometimes it scared Wooyoung how quickly Yunho could go between the two moods. 

***

When the storm had calmed enough for Wooyoung to dare walking outside, he spent an evening with Yeosang and Jongho. 

He was curled up on their couch, with Yeosang sandwiched between himself and Jongho. It had been so long - too long - since he had cuddled his friend, and here, watching the fire, was one of the most long awaited moments of his life.

It was comfortable. At least, it was comfortable until Yeosang’s head popped up and his back was ramrod straight. 

Wooyoung glanced at him, slightly offended. “What’s wrong?” Jongho asked. 

“Wildfire.” 

Wooyoung’s brows drew together. He had heard San call his magic wildfire, even heard old lords call him “San of the Wildfire” before the war. But there was no possible way Yeosang knew that. “What are you talking about?”

Yeosang was untangling himself from the two sets of arms around him and moving to the dining table. “Wildfire. It’s a chemical. We used to manufacture it here.”

Jongho was the first to follow him to the table. “What does it do?” 

Yeosang chewed his bottom lip. “When lit, it explodes.”

Wooyoung finally removed himself from the couch and joined the two. “Would it be enough to take out the clock tower?” Yeosang’s expression was enough to tell him, but he answered anyway.

“If it gets used wrong, it could be enough to take out the entire city.”

***

The storm finally calmed. 

Calmed to just a few giant flakes falling from the sky, catching on hair and faces, and melting as soon as they did. 

The riverbank was uninhabited, the small stone structure the only sign of having been disturbed by human life. 

Wooyoung waited at the small clearing of trees. San had planned on coming alone. But this morning he’d woken up and just…needed him with him. 

He sat on the cold ground, tucking his legs beneath himself and buried in snow up to his thighs. 

“Hello, Seonghwa,” he breathed.

He said nothing for a while, content to be near him, even like this. 

When he began talking, it was quietly, telling Seonghwa all of what had happened to him eleven years ago, telling him about these past months. When he was done, he stared up at the bare trees, dragging his fingers through the snow. 

“I miss you,” he said. “Every day, I miss you. And I wonder what you would have made of this. Made of me. I think you would have made a wonderful guardian to a king. I think they would have liked you more than me, actually.” His throat tightened. “I never told you how I felt. But I loved you, and I think a part of me might always love you. Maybe you would have been able to completely replace my family, and I never knew it. Maybe I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering about that. Maybe I’ll see you again in the Afterworld, and then I’ll know for sure. But until then…until then I’ll miss you, and I’ll wish you were here.”

He would not apologize, nor say it was his fault. Because his death wasn’t his fault. 

He wiped at his face with the back of his sleeve and got to his feet and when he turned, Wooyoung stood a few feet away, staring at the stone structure behind him with a hand outstretched to hold.

***

Somehow, Yeosang had found a single barrel of wildfire left in the fortress. Nobody asked how he managed to steal it. 

Mingi and Yunho had opted to go carry out the plan. Mingi had insisted they were the least expendable, and Yunho had said it was because they were the most capable of getting in and out quickly. 

San and Yeosang came to send them off. They helped saddle their horses and attach a small wagon to the back of one, just enough to hold the small barrel. Mingi had already mounted his stallion, while Yunho remained on the ground for one last briefing. 

“No fires anywhere near it. When you get into the city, there’s an entrance to the sewers behind the brothel. Follow the tunnels east and it should lead you straight to the base of the tower,” Yeosang explained. “You’ll know you’re close when you feel like there’s an anvil in your head and your nose starts bleeding.”

Yunho nodded and turned to San. There was a small smile pulling at his lips. “Once you’re there,” San began, “light the candle and leave it there. You’ll have twenty minutes at most to get out and to the edge of the city.”

Before Yunho mounted his own horse, he gave San a small bow and took his hand in his own. “I haven’t known you for long, but I can see you care for your people. I admire how far you’re going to help them.” It made a smile pull at San’s own lips. It shocked him, though, when Yunho pulled him in close, and whispered in his ear, “There is a light burning inside you, Choi San. Don’t let that light go out.”

San didn’t even have time to process before he was mounting the mare and following Mingi to the wall.

He stood, staring at the two figures with Yeosang until they were mere specks in the distance. Without turning to look at him, he asked, “What will happen to the brothel?”

“It’ll probably be destroyed with the tower.”

“Good.” 

***

The worst part had to be the waiting. 

Wooyoung could see that each day of no news was wearing San down. It was doing the same to him. 

So many things could have gone wrong already. They could have been caught, something could have gone wrong with the wildfire. Each possibility ended with the same result. 

It was on the fifth day that he felt it - the world felt it. A low thrum in the air, a surge more powerful than anything Wooyoung had ever felt. There was smoke visible from the window of the inn, flashes of green reaching up into the sky, even from all these miles and miles away.

Mingi and Yunho had done it.

They had freed magic.

***

It was less than a day when Mingi came back. The white-tailed hawk flew low, and with a flash of light, was replaced by the male. He came bounding up to San, looking more frazzled than he had ever seen him. 

“What happened?”

“Everything within a mile of the tower was destroyed. Yunho is right behind me, but we have a problem.” San didn’t even want to ask, just stood waiting for him to continue. “On my way back, I passed over them. It’s an entire army, ten thousand, all wights. This fortress needs to be ready for a siege, now.”

San felt a terror he had started becoming accustomed to. He had been terrified of a single wight, but ten thousand of them? He couldn’t begin to imagine it. “How long?”

“A week, maybe less.” He nodded, turning to head back to the inn. “San.” He stopped where he was and turned to face the male once again. 

“There aren’t ten thousand wights in all of Wendlyn. Whatever the king is doing with them, they aren’t normal. I don’t think even magic can kill them.”

The pit that was forming in San’s stomach tightened impossibly more. He swallowed against the rising bile in his throat and simply said, “You and Yunho are in charge of training as many men as you can.”

“Yes, your Grace.”

He didn’t get to enjoy the respect he was shown, not with their impending deaths a week away.

***

Everyone was doing everything they possibly could. Trenches were being dug around the entire perimeter of the walls, able bodied men and women alike were being trained by Mingi, Yunho, and the few soldiers there were stationed in the fortress. Jongho was doing his best to train younger people, those who have had no experience at all, but it was slow work.

San was trying his hardest to help, but Mingi always claimed that he would be the biggest help if he rested and dove deep into himself to be able to light the trenches when the time came. 

He wanted so desperately to be useful. The only other person who seemed like they understood was Wooyoung. They were both being denied any tasks, it seemed. San could see irritation boiling just under the surface everytime Wooyoung was rejected and he was sure he looked about the same when it happened to him. 

The only time either of them really found anything to do was during food distribution. They helped serve everyone every evening. It was disheartening, seeing how drained and afraid people looked. 

On an evening only San was helping out, an older couple came to him. They both looked exhausted, holding out their bowls for him to ladle soup into. The husband spoke up, his voice shaky. “Please, your Grace. We aren’t soldiers,” he said.

Before San could answer them, give them any kind of gentle reassurance, Mingi was strolling up behind them. “You are now.” 

The wife looked scandalized, and San was sure he did, too. She made a move as if she was about to give Mingi a piece of her mind, but he cut her off. “I have survived battles with far worse odds than this. You can survive this.” The Fae male grabbed two small loafs of bread and placed them in the hands of the couple. “Jongho will suit you with weapons.”

The couple glanced at San one last time, and all the apology he could give them was a tight-lipped smile. 

***

Gathered around a table, a map with the battlement plans in front of them, Wooyoung couldn’t find any hope of winning this. He had already come to the conclusion that he would be dead before this was over, along with everyone else here. 

To say they were outnumbered was an understatement. They barely had a third of the enemy’s forces, and most of them were not properly trained. Wights may not exactly be seasoned soldiers, but killing is their entire existence. 

Mingi was going over the battle plans with all of them, but Wooyoung had checked out long ago. He could vaguely hear San saying that his purpose in this was to light the trenches, but his attention was brought back to the present when he began to argue. 

“But why stop there? Why can’t I just light the wights themselves?”

“Because that won’t work.”

“You don’t know that. If I could just kill them before they reach the trenches, it could save thousands of-”

“San, I am telling you, it won’t work. These wights are not normal, there’s no guarantee your magic can kill them. If you waste all your energy on that and it doesn’t work, we will lose a line of defense.” 

San began to argue again, but it was Yunho who beat him to it. “Enough. Both of you.” Wooyoung hadn’t heard him sound so stern, the tone shocking him. “We need to stop focusing on this right now and ask something else: where is the king going to be?”

Silence fell over the table, and Wooyoung’s eyes fell to the floor. Shame burned inside him. Shame of being the son of such a vile man, shame of being the heir of that man’s legacy. He felt five pairs of eyes on him rather than saw them. “Wooyoung?” Yunho asked, kindness back in his voice. “Is there something you would like to say?” 

Wooyoung stayed silent. He flinched when he felt a hand on his shoulder, looked up to see San looking at him desperately. “Wooyoung, if you know anything, you need to tell us. Anything at all would help.”

Wooyoung held San’s gaze, the shame burning brighter. Shame of being the son of the man who sought to kill this male, this male he loved so deeply.

He took in a breath through his nose, turned his eyes back to the map on the table. He had no answers, no idea of knowing what was going through that man’s head.

Yunho sighed, and Mingi picked up where he left off before San had interrupted him. “I believe these wights are somehow connected to the king. If we can manage to kill him, there’s a chance this could all end.”

Shame that he couldn’t do anything to help.

“If that’s true, he’ll never show himself,” Yeosang said.

Shame that all these people were going to die at the hands of his father… 

“He will.”

All those eyes were back on him. San was the first to speak up. “How do you know that?”

“He’ll come for me.” 

Mingi gave him a short nod in reply and continued on, “Someone will stay with you to deal with him when the time comes, then.”

“I will,” San said. Mingi started to object, and San all but growled at him. Yunho once again got between them before things got heated. “San will stay with Wooyoung. He’ll be safest with him.”

Wooyoung was thankful when Yeosang changed the direction of the conversation. “Where will the disabled and children be going?”

“The crypt should be safe enough. The doors get locked with a key, so nothing can get through them.”

Wooyoung checked out again after that.

***

Hardly a week after magic was freed, Yunho returned from a patrol looking shaken to his very core. 

When San questioned him, his only reply was, “They’re coming.”

His chest tightened. “How long?”

“Before tomorrow morning.”

***

That afternoon flew by in a blur. Everyone was rushing to get everything in place, get some last minute training. San felt like he was watching himself perform actions from outside his body. 

Dark fell, and he had found himself in bed with Wooyoung. It seemed they weren’t the only ones taking advantage of what could possibly be their last night on this earth. Most other couples had sought out bedrooms, Mingi and Yunho and Yeosang and Jongho included. 

They were a tangled mess of limbs, clung to each other in complete silence. San’s hand had found its way into Wooyoung’s hair, gently rubbing circles onto his scalp. There was so much he wished to say, needed to say. He may not get another chance to do so. 

Steeling himself as best he could, his hand stopped its movements and brought Wooyoung’s attention to him. “Wooyoung, I-”

A horn sounded outside. 

They were here.

***

San had dressed quicker than he ever had in his entire life. Atop the walls, he could see the gathering clouds approaching them. His heart felt like it would jump out of his throat at any moment. 

Wooyoung was close to his side, and Mingi on the other to brief him one last time. “Remember, you are to light the trenches. Do not try to engage them.”

San nodded, but it seemed that was not satisfactory enough. “Say it.”

“The trenches.” That would have to be enough, because San felt like he couldn’t get anything else out. 

It seemed it was, because Mingi was leaving to go to his own position. 

San could feel Wooyoung shaking beside him, and he knew it wasn’t just from the cold. He took his hand, and felt a squeeze in response. He didn’t know if it was more about calming Wooyoung down or to ground himself at this point.

The horns sounded again, the sound becoming more and more deafening each time. And then he could see them.

The wights, slowly walking in formation, as if they were real soldiers. It was more unnerving than if they had been acting the way wights were meant to. 

“Gods help us,” Wooyoung gasped beside him. San gave the hand a squeeze of his own, silently telling him to stay calm. 

The closer the wights came, the more San’s throat constricted. The fear was consuming him completely. He couldn’t move anymore, couldn’t speak. He could hardly even hear the cries of those below to light the trenches.

He could see all of them now, all ten thousand. He had the chance to end this right here, right now. His own body began to shake, but not from fear. 

From restraint.

He wanted nothing more than to give these people the chance to live. That chance could be given if he could just ignite them all in this moment. They were coming closer, so close to the trenches, close to the first line of soldiers on the ground. There was so much screaming already, all directed at him. It was deafening. These people all wanted to live.

And so the trenches went up in flames. 

The wights stopped, mere feet from the flames. Archers had their bows trained on them, arrows flaming. 

And then a single wight stepped forward, and walked into the fire. And then another. And another. And soon, dozens of them were stepping into the flames, only to fall head first into them. 

They were building bridges to cross. The archers began to let their arrows loose, trying to slow the ascent of wights up the walls. 

Panic wasn’t enough to describe what San felt as he pulled Wooyoung behind him, down the stairs and into the courtyard of the fortress. He stopped in the empty clearing, held him at arm's length by the shoulders. “You need to get to the crypt.”

“I’m not leaving these people to die.”

“Wooyoung, I’m not giving you a choice. I need you to be somewhere safe,” he insisted. Wooyoung just shook his head, trying to pry San’s hands off him. His eyes followed the horizon, brain working to figure out a way to get him to do as he said. His gaze fell on a tree in the distance, taller than all the rest in the surrounding area. 

“Go to the godswood.”

“What?” Wooyoung asked.

“Just do what I say. Go, and if I’m not there by morning, run. If he finds you there, run. I promise I’ll come find you.” San let go, and pulled his spare dagger from his belt, held it out to him. Wooyoung eyed the weapon warily.

“I don’t know how to use it.”

“Stick them with the pointy end.” Wooyoung finally closed his hand around the shaft of the dagger, and threw his arms around San’s neck before he turned and left. 

***

San had no idea how, but he had ended up in the library of the fortress. He had lost count of how many wights had come at him already. Mortal weapons indeed did nothing to them, but fire did. He had long since resorted to his magic and his blades hung uselessly at his hips. 

He shut the library door quietly behind him, grateful to take a moment to just breathe and think. 

A footstep shuffled, and then dragged. San darted behind a bookshelf, his back pressed against it. He peered around the edge and found a single wight. It was walking in a way that seemed as if it was patrolling the shelves, but he knew better than to believe that it was anything but mindless. 

And then similar shuffling footsteps sounded out of time with this wight. San walked silently around the shelf he was hiding by, peered around the other side, and found a second wight with its back to him. 

With all the Fae grace he had, he bounded over to the next shelf. The side of this one had nothing hiding in the shadows, so he crossed to the next. There was nothing directly beside him, but across the aisle was another one. He crossed again. 

The wight here was too close for him to dare crossing again. He sank down to the ground, his heart pounding. He was going to die here, in a library. If he killed one, the others would all come running and he didn’t know how many were inside. 

He looked up to the window above him, tears stinging his eyes. A white screech owl was sitting on the windowsill inside the building. Its wings spread, it was readying to fly at him, and San braced himself for an attack that never came.

When he looked up next, he was standing in a foyer of marble before an empty throne. 

“Hello, Choi San.” 

He turned around, and was faced with his aunt. “This isn’t real.”

She laughed, a lilting sound that didn’t reach her eyes. “No, it isn’t.”

“What do you want?”

Instead of answering his question, his aunt said, “You are all going to die. You, your mortal prince, and my two best soldiers.” He didn’t want to ask how she knew. “Help us,” he pleaded. “Please, help us. None of those people deserve to die.”

The Fae Queen laughed again, and it took everything he had to resist yelling at her. “I’m begging you. Take my immortality, take anything you want, but help us.”

His aunt cooed at him and came closer, gripped his face between her hands. “I do not want your immortality.”

The tears finally spilled over. They really were going to die. “It’s time for you to go back, nephew.” 

San didn’t get to say anything else before he was back where he was before, arms still up in front of his head in preparation for the owl’s attack. He lowered them slowly, and found a book on the floor beside him that had not been there before. 

He picked it up, and tossed it out into the middle aisle. Every wight in the library was drawn to the sound, and it gave him the chance to finish crossing the room to the door on the other side. He closed it just as quietly as he had the first, and locked it.

***

Wooyoung had no idea how long he had been standing in the godswood. The screams had not helped him keep track of time. He had resorted to praying, knelt in front of the giant tree, San’s dagger abandoned by his side. 

He was so absorbed in his prayers that he hadn’t noticed he was being approached.

“Hello, son.”

Wooyoung jumped up, turned to face the king, dread building in his gut. Everything in him was telling him to move, to run, but he couldn’t. He could only watch as a sick grin pulled at the king’s - his father’s - lips. 

“Why do you fear me, child?”

Wooyoung’s words stuck in his throat, and that must have amused his father, as he was laughing. “You sit here and pray for these people. Why?” 

He swallowed down his fear, found it in himself to force himself to speak. “They’ve done nothing wrong.” 

A scoff. “They are Fae.”

“Not all of them. There’s nothing wrong with being Fae.”

The king took a step closer to him. “Fae are monsters. Liars.”

Wooyoung shook his head, bit back the pleas he wanted to cry. “They aren’t like-”

“You have been tricked, son. Your servant filled your head with false stories and swayed you to their side. Come home, and forget this nonsense.” 

“No.” 

His father raised a brow, his expression dark. “No?” 

“No.” Wooyoung was shocked by the strength in his voice. He didn’t waver, didn’t shy away, even as the king approached him, grabbed him by the collar of his tunic. He didn’t back down even as he took in a deep breath and said, “You smell like a Fae bitch.”

And then San appeared behind his father, practically flying though the frigid air, a dagger in hand. The king released Wooyoung and turned, stopping the Fae male in his tracks with a hand around his throat. San was already gasping for air, blood trickling down from his forehead and into his eyes, but his raised hand dropped the blade, and it fell down, down, down. 

Down into his other hand, and it was plunged into the king’s heart. 

There was no fire, but the king’s body vanished into ashes, San fell to the ground and heaved air into his lungs, and the screaming stopped.

***

Pyres surrounded them. Wooyoung was beside him, his arms wrapped around Yeosang as he sobbed over Jongho’s body laid out on the wooden platform. Each and every survivor was gathered behind him, eyes watchful as he stood over another pyre, over Hongjoong and the older couple he had only met days before. 

San turned his back to the hundred pyres, and addressed the survivors. 

“We’re here to say goodbye to our brothers and sisters. To our fathers and mothers. To our friends,” he began. “Our fellow men and women who set aside their differences to fight together and die together so that others might live. Everyone in this world owes them a debt that can never be repaid. It is our duty and honor to keep them alive in memory for those who come after us and those who come after them. We shall never see their like again.” A new wave of confidence crashed over him. “But I swear to you, this,” he held his arm out behind him, to the pyres laden with corpses, “will never happen again. Not while I sit on my throne, and not while I still draw breath. I swear to you that those who would harm you will die screaming.”

As he spoke his last words, the pyres went up in flames. He turned, his hand outstretched to Wooyoung. His lover let go of Yeosang, left him to his family, and took his hand. 

They made it all but two steps before Wooyoung dropped to his knees in pain. San followed him, trying to find where he was hurt. Panic set in, but the moment was over as quickly as it had started. San watched as Wooyoung looked at him, stared at his now delicately pointed ears and matching little fangs. He stared up at the sky as a white screech owl flew overhead of them.

The gods were listening after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Helloooo!
> 
> This chapter ended up very different from how I originally planned for it, but I'm still pretty happy with it. it's a lot shorter than the last one, but honestly, I don't mind. the last chapter was kinda the bulk of what I wanted, and i'm super happy with this fic!


	6. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Definitely suggest listening to Declaration while reading this last chapter

The capital was buzzing with activity outside. The cold was nothing to its citizens, not today.

Each piece of clothing was ornately embroidered with leaves, hand stitched to fit him perfectly. A twisting and twirling chest piece mimicked armor, but still had an elegant appearance. Fur was draped over his shoulders, soft to the touch and sensible for the oncoming winter months.

Each step down the aisle was a step closer to the one thing he desired more than anything. More than life itself.

As he passed, seated people stood and bowed, no sounds in the air except his boots clicking against the marble floors. 

The intricately carved throne stood before him, now paired with a second throne that was already occupied by a beautiful boy - a Fae male - with black hair that graced his cheekbones.

He sat in the unoccupied throne, his fingers intertwining with Wooyoung’s. The pastor leaned over, placed the crown of his kingdom on his head. 

The crown that his father and his uncle had worn in years past. 

Each man in the crowd before him drew their swords, pointed them to the thrones as he was declared king of the northern Fae kingdom, as well as Adarlan.

Choi San had finally come home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You have made it to the end.
> 
> I really enjoyed writing this. It ended super different from how I was originally thinking, but I don't think I could be any happier with it.
> 
> thank you for sticking around to the end and I hope to see you in the next one!

**Author's Note:**

> Well, you've made it through the first chapter.  
> Honestly, if you've read ToG you probably already know where this is heading. If you haven't then you should get on it because those books are absolute art.
> 
> I'm very slow, but I hope to have chapter two up sometime in the next week!


End file.
